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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm

THE
UTTERMOST STAR

AND OTHER

GLEAMS OF FANCY

BY

F. W. BOREHAM

author op

"the silver shadow," "the other side op the hill,'

"faces in the fire," "mushrooms on the moor,"

"the golden milestone," "mountains in

the mist," "the luggage op

life," etc.

THE ABINGDON PRESS
NEW YORK CINCINNATI

\

Copyright, 19 19, by
F. W. BOREHAM

SEP -4 I9iy

©CI.A529773

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAP.

I. THE SIGNAL-BOX .
II. THE UTTERMOST STAR .

III. PICKING UP THE PILE LIGHT

IV. MARJORIE
V. CAMOUFLAGE

VI. THE WHALER
VII. A BOX OF PERFUME
VIII. SLIPPERS
IX. THE MISER OF MURDSTONE CREEK
X. THE SECRET .
XI. MARY GOLDING

PAGE

9

19

27

38
48

58

68

78

89
100

no

PART II

I. DRIFTING APART .
II. THE WILL-o'-THE-WISP

III. THE doctor's CONVERSION

IV. HEATHER AND BLUEBELLS
V. THE VILLAGE GREEN

VI. THE SIEVE .

. 123

. 144
. 156
, 167
. 180

4

Contents

PART III

CHAP.

I. slip! ....

II. THE FOUR IDOLS .

III. HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR

IV. THE LANTERN IN THE LANE
V. THE HOLLY-TREE .

VI. RIFTS OF BLUE
VII. A DIVIDED DIACONATE .
VIII. WHEN THE TIDE TURNS

PAGE
. 191
. 201
. 213
. 221
. 230
• 239
. 247
. 257

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

An author putting the finishing touches to his manu-
script and writing his Introduction resembles a host-
ess preparing to receive her guests. For weeks she
has been engaged in making the most careful prep-
arations for their entertainment. Now the evening
has arrived; her great hour has come; she is about
to take up her position at the door. Her anxious
eye wanders restlessly over the polished floors, the
pictured walls, the cosy chairs, the faultless tables —
everything. She sees that every flower is showing
to the best advantage; that every noble vase and
marble statuette is in its place; and that every lamp
is casting its softest, loveliest glow.

But what is that? The sound of wheels! They
draw up at the gate ! Throw the doors wide open !
The first guests are arriving !

Welcome! a thousand welcomes! If those who
accept the hospitality of these pages find in them
half the pleasure that their preparation has afforded
me, I shall count myself the happiest of hosts.

FRANK W. BOREHAM.

Armadale, Melbourne, Australia,
Easter, 1919.

PART I

THE SIGNAL-BOX

When I was a small boy in my Kentish home, I was
occasionally missing — even at meal-times. As the
years wore on, the alarm created by these mysteri-
ous disappearances of mine gradually subsided, not
by reason of any dwindling value or importance at-
tached to my person, but simply because a very
shrewd conjecture could be formed as to my where-
abouts. For at the foot of our garden, separated
from it by a high bank, which was itself a romantic
wilderness of blackberries, ran the railway. And
just beside the railway line, not more than a hundred
yards from the bottom of the garden, was the signal-
box. Few things delighted me more than to spend
an hour in that old signal-box. It was close to the
mouth of the tunnel. I loved to hear the bell go
ring-a-ting-ting when the train entered the tunnel on
the far side, and to watch for its emergence on our
side. It seemed to me positively uncanny that the
signalman could tell by all these clanging tokens
just where all the trains were. I liked to see him
swing the great levers backwards and forwards,
pulling the signals up and down, and at night-time

9

lo The Uttermost Star

causing the green and red lights to shine from the
tall signal-posts. As I sat beside his great roaring
fire on winter evenings, and saw him stop the trains
or let them pass, just as he pleased, I thought he
must surely be one of the most important men in
the country. I could scarcely imagine that the
Prime Minister had greater authority or responsi-
bility. And I remember, as clearly as though it
were yesterday, that I used to sit on the stool be-
side that fire — face in hands and elbows on knees —
wondering if I might hope, one great day, to attain
to the glory of being a signalman. And, surely
enough, I have !

For I have come to see, as the days have gone by,
that we humans are expert and inveterate signalmen.
We have a perfect genius for concocting mysterious
codes; we revel in flashing out cryptic heliograms;
we glory in receiving occult messages. We even
communicate in this abstruse and recondite fashion
with our own selves. A man will twist a piece of
string round his finger, or tie a knot in the corner of
his pocket-handkerchief, or stick a scrap of stamp-
paper on the face of his watch, to remind him of
something that has nothing whatever to do with
string or handkerchief or stamp-paper. It is his
secret code, and in the terms of that code this invet-
erate signalman is signalling to himself, that is all !

Moreover, we not only signal to ourselves, but we
are fascinated by the spectacle of other people sig-
nalling to themselves. A novel becomes invested

The Signal-Boz n

with a new interest when its plot suddenly turns
upon the weird phenomena of a witch's cavern or
the mysterious ritual of a gipsy camp. By means of
her viper, her owl, her toad, her cauldron, her tripod,
her herbs, and all the rest of it, the withered crone
in the dimly lighted cave is signalling to herself
from morning to night; by means of the crossed
sticks where the roads fork the gipsies leave tokens
for themselves and each other. Many a man will
wear a charm hanging round his neck, or suspended
to his watch-chain, of which nobody knows the
significance but himself. Luther went down to his
grave without revealing even to his wife the mean-
ing of the five mystic initials that he had carved over
the portal of his house. They are, he explained, the
initials of five German words; but what those words
were he alone knew. The signals stand to this day
over the portal ; the code was locked up in the great
reformer's breast, and, deposited there, it descended
with him to his tomb.

Henrik Ibsen, too, the great Norwegian drama-
tist, kept on his writing-table a small ivory tray con-
taining a number of grotesque figures, a wooden
bear, a tiny devil, two or three cats — one of them
playing a fiddle — and some rabbits. T never write
a single line of any of my dramas,' Ibsen used to say,
'without having that tray and its occupants before
me on my table. I could not write without them. But
why I use them and how, this is my own secret.'
Here was a great and brilliant thinker happy in

12 The Uttermost Star

being able to flash covert messages to himself by a
code which no one but himself ever knew ! I in-
stance these — the witch's cavern, the gipsy's ritual,
the reformer's portal, and the dramatist's tray — to
show that our passion for signalling is so ingrained
and deep-seated that, if we cannot satisfy it in cryp-
tic communication with others, we atone for the de-
ficiency by signalling to ourselves.

After all, there is but one really universal lan-
guage. It was spoken in the world's first morning,
and men will still be speaking it when they are
startled by the shocks of doom. It was the language
of the Stone Age, and it will be the language of the
Golden Age. It is spoken all the world over by men
of all kinds, classes, colours, and conditions; and if
either Mars or the moon is really inhabited, it is
spoken there too. The little child speaks it before he
is able to lisp one single word of our clumsier dic-
tionary speech ; and the aged speak it long after the
palsied lip has lost its utterance. It is equally intel-
ligible to the English merchant on the London
market, to the Indian trapper in the Western for-
ests, to the Chinese mandarin in the far interior of
Asia, to the South Sea Islander basking in the rays
of an equatorial sun, and to the Eskimo in his frozen
hut amidst the blinding whiteness of the icy North.
It is known even to the beasts of the field and the
birds of the air; they understand it, and sometimes
even speak it. The universal language is the lan-
guage of gesture. The shrug of the shoulders; the

The Signal-Boz 13

flash of the eye; the knitting of the brows; the curl-
ing of the Hp; the stamping of the foot; the clench-
ing of the fist; the nodding of the head; the pointing
of the hand, — here is a language which is known to
every one. It has no alphabet, no grammar, and no
syntax ; but the simplest can understand it. Indeed,
the simplest understand it best. The savage is a
master of gesture. He speaks with every nerve and
muscle. And the little child is no less eloquent.
Playing with her doll on the floor behind my chair
is a small scrap of humanity who has as yet uttered
no word that a lexicographer would recognize. And
yet it would be absurd to say that she has not spoken.
Her pushings and pullings, her beckonings and
pointings, her smilings and poutings, are as expres-
sive as anything in any of your vocabularies. She
has found a speech for which the builders of Babel
sighed in vain — a speech that can be understood by
men and women of every nation under heaven. It
is the language of signals.

We are living in a universe that is constantly try-
ing to talk. It does not understand any of your
artificial or manufactured languages — your Hebrew
or Greek or Latin; your English or German or
French — but it understands the universal language,
the language of gestures, the language of signals.
*The air,' says Emerson, *is full of sounds, the sky
of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and sig-
natures ; and every object is covered over with hints
which speak to the intelligent.' The stars above my

14 The Uttermost Star

head are signalling ; the astronomer masters the code
and reads the secrets of the universe. The stones
that I tread beneath my feet are signalling ; the geol-
ogist unravels the code and interprets the romance
of ages.

All Nature is one intricate system of signals, as
any naturalist will tell you. Let Richard Jefferies
speak for them all. In discussing the birds that
shelter in the ivy under his gable, he says that often
a robin or a wren will pounce upon a caterpillar
whilst the grub is still concealed among the grass.
How is it done? It is all a matter of signals. *The
bird's eyes, ever on the watch for food, learn to de-
tect the slightest indication of its presence. Slugs,
caterpillars, and such creatures, in moving among
the grass, cause a slight agitation of the grassblades;
they lift up a leaf by crawling under it, or depress it
with their weight by getting on it. This enables the
bird to detect their presence, even when quite
hidden by the herbage, experience having taught it
that, when grass is moved by the wind, broad patches
sway simultaneously, whilst, when an insect or cater-
pillar is the agent, only a single leaf or blade is
stirred.' The birds learn the code and readily in-
terpret the signals. Those who live near to Nature
soon acquire the same habit. The poetry of the
countryside abounds with rhymes and couplets that
are, after all, only expositions of Nature's signals.

When elm leaves are as big as a shilling,

You may sow French beans if you be willing.

The Signal-Boz 15

What is this but the interpretation of the code?
The whispering elm leaves are the farmer's signal-
flags. The universe, like the baby on my study floor,
is always pathetically trying to talk to me; and the
pity of it is that I am so slow to understand.

The language of signals is, I have shown, the one
universal language. That is why, when man has
something really great to say, he says it, not audibly,
but visibly. The lover abandons the dictionary; he
can say what he wishes to say so much more expres-
sively by means of signals, A look; a pressure of
the hand; a ring; a kiss, — what vocabulary could
compare with a code like this? And it is a code
that is comprehended in every nation under heaven.
Or what man could express in so many words all
that he feels, when, for example, he waves his coun-
try's flag? *Have not I,' Carlyle makes Herr Teu-
felsdrockh inquire, *have not I myself known five
hundred living soldiers sabred into crow's meat for a
piece of glazed cotton which they call their Flag;
which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would
not have brought above three groschen ? Did not the
whole Hungarian nation rise, like some tumultuous
moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed
their Iron Crown, an implement, as was sagaciously
observed, in size and commercial value little differ-
ing from a horseshoe ? It is in and through symbols
that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works,
and has his being; those ages, moreover, are ac-
counted the noblest which can the best recognize

i6 The Uttermost Star

symbolic worth and prize it the highest. For is
not a symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some
dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike?*
When, that is to say, man has something really great
to say he says it by some mute sign or silent symbol.
Similarly, when God has something to say to the
Jew alone. He may perhaps cause His messenger to
say it in the Hebrew tongue ; but when He has some-
thing to say to all men everywhere, He always
speaks the universal language, the language of ges-
ture and symbol and sign. He speaks to the uni-
versal heart by means of the Ark, the Scapegoat,
the Passover, the Mercy Seat, the Serpent in the
Wilderness, the Cities of Refuge. Such signs need
no translation; they speak to men of every clime
and time. In the New Testament the same principle
holds true.

He talked of lilies, vines, and corn,

The sparrow and the raven,
And tales so natural, yet so wise,

Were on men's hearts engraven.
And yeast and bread and flax and cloth,

And eggs and fish and candles ;
See, how the whole familiar world

He most divinely handles.

When God has something really vital to say to
man. He says it in a language that requires no trans-
lation or interpretation. He says it in a way that
all men can comprehend. *The veil of the temple
was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.' All

The Signal-Box 17

men everywhere can see the awful and profound
significance of such a signal. A man may be unable
to grasp the doctrine of the Atonement; but where
is the heart that does not respond to the Vision of
the Cross ?

We are inveterate signalmen. We begin to make
signals as soon as we crawl from our cradles ; we are
still making them when tottering down to our
graves.

*It may be, master/ said Richard Bannatyne,
John Knox's faithful serving-man, *it may be that
you will still be able to recognize my voice after
you have become oblivious to every other sight and
sound. When you are apparently unconscious, I
shall bend over you and ask if you have still the hope
of glory. Will you promise, if you are able to give
me some signal, that you will do so ?'

The old reformer made the promise, and, a few
days later, turned into his room to die.

Grim in his deep death-anguish the stern old champion lay,
And the locks upon his pillow were floating thin and grey,
And, visionless and voiceless, with quick and labouring breath,
He waited for his exit through life's dark portal, death.

'Hast thou the hope of glory ?' They bowed to catch the thrill
That through some languid token might be responsive still,
Nor watched they long nor waited for some obscure reply.
He raised a clay-cold finger and pointed to the sky.

So the death-angel found him, what time his brow he bent,
To give the struggling spirit a sweet enfranchisement.

1 8 The Uttermost Star

So the death-angel left him, what time earth's bonds were

riven,
The cold, stark, stiffening finger still pointing up to heaven.

It is a great thing when the signalman's last signals
are as unequivocal as that.

II

THE UTTERMOST STAR

I HAVE been on a visit to the uttermost star. You
will search all your learned astronomical volumes
in vain for any reference to such a sphere. No
observatory has descried it; it never swam into the
field of even the most powerful telescope. The fact
is that I discovered it myself. I was longing one
day for a bird's-eye view of the universe. You do
not get a satisfactory conception of the architecture
of a cathedral by attending evening worship. You
must see the glorious structure in the daytime and
from a distance. Similarly, you do not know the
universe till you have seen it from afar. You
cannot see things in their right perspective. A
sparrow on a housetop looks as big as a star in the
sky. Tf,' I said to myself that morning, *if only I
could get right away from all the worlds, and if only
I could view the universe from some point out be-
yond the universe, I should be able to compile a
new standard of values. The little things that seem
large because they are so near at hand will all

19

20 The Uttermost Star

vanish, and I shall know what those things are that
still stand bravely out when everything else is lost in
the infinite distance.'

And so I set out on my breathless flight. I
cannot tell you how far I went. In a second or two
I lost sight of the houses and the trees; in another I
could no longer distinguish between the mountains
and the plains. When next I glanced over my
shoulder, the sea and the dry land were all as one.
I could not tell where the one ended and the other
began. And a moment later I had some difficulty
in identifying the earth at all. I left the sun and
the moon behind me before I paused for the first
time ; and I paused many and many a time before I
reached my journey's end. At last the space
before me was one vast unbroken void. All the
whirling globes were circling behind me. I went on
and on, day after day, through nothing but one
boundless and terrific wilderness of solitude.

And then, just as I was thinking of taking my
observations and returning, I found a new world!
It was a lonely little world, a kind of astral outpost;
the Ultima Thule of all the stellar systems. There
it hung, poised in space, on the fringe of a vacant
infinity! And there I paused. From the shores
of this prodigal planet I surveyed the distant
universe. There was something weirdly fantastic
in seeing that universe, not as my dwelling-place
enfolding me, but as a remote object on a far hori-
zon. And what could I see of it? What were the

The Uttermost Star 21

things that stood clearly out, now that all the details
were obscured? Of all the myriad objects that con-
fused my sight when I dwelt upon the earth, I could
now see clearly only two things.

I had a vision of wondrous harmony! All things
kept their course in perfect and glorious unity.
There was no clash, no confusion, no discord any-
where. This, surely, was what the patriarch meant
when he said that the morning stars sang together!
This, surely, was what the poet meant when he
wrote of the music of the spheres! Out here, on the
shores of the uttermost star, I was listening to the
melodies of the universe; the song of the morning
stars; the music of the spheres!

And I had a vision of wondrous light! The only
other thing that I could see was that the universe
was luminous. Some of the worlds, I had noticed in
passing, were blazing in appalling splendours of
their own ; others were dead and cold, yet reflecting
in their very barrenness the fierce glare that fell
upon them from their brilliant neighbours. But at
this distance I could not distinguish between the
worlds that shone with a borrowed radiance and
those that flamed with a lustre of their own. All
that I could see was that the universe was all alight.
Every world twinkled, glittered, burned, and shone !

Harmony — perfect, ceaseless, unbroken!

Light — soft, resplendent, beautiful!

These were the only things that were still discern-
ible as I surveyed the universe from this lonely

22 The Uttermost Star

outpost. These, therefore, are the two greatest
things upon it.

II

I have been on a visit to the Orient. And one
memorable afternoon, when the sky was a vault of
cloudless blue and all the earth was fair, I found
myself wandering aimlessly but joyously among the
soft green Syrian hills. I sat down on the side of a
grassy knoll and feasted my eyes on the quiet beauty
of this idyllic scene. Not many yards below me a
little stream flowed gently past the foot of the slop-
ing hillside and meandered through the silent valley.
There was no laughter in its waters; they moved
slowly and peacefully on. Reeds and rushes grew
plentifully along its banks. All at once I realized
that I was not alone. I heard first the bleating
of sheep, and then, a little later, human footsteps.
A shepherd came round the curve of the knoll,
sauntering slowly, with his flock following at his
heels. He was leading them down through the
green pastures to the still waters. He did not notice
me ; his attention seemed to be fastened on the reeds
flourishing beside the stream. When he reached
them he began to look about, examining them with a
critical eye. One, a tall one, was bent, and drooped
towards him. The sheep may have broken it in
browsing there the day before; or perhaps a gust of
wind had caught it. Anyway, it was broken.
With a rough hand he snatched at it; looked it up

The Uttermost Star 23

and down disdainfully; doubled it at the point at
which it was damaged before; and tossed it out on
to the gently moving waters. Then he cut for
himself another reed, a sturdier one, without flaw
or fault of any kind. And as he led his flock gently
along the banks of the stream, watching the poor
broken reed floating away on the sluggish current,
he worked away with deft and practised fingers,
and out of the faultless reed he fashioned for him-
self a flute. And when it was finished he put it to his
lips, and, lo, the sweet, clear music filled all that
peaceful valley !

Harmony! It was a vision of Harmony!

When he paused to take breath and to look around
upon his flock, I rose and approached him. Until
then he had been unconscious of my presence. I sat
sometimes talking with him and sometimes listening
to the soft, sweet strains of his flute, until the
approach of sunset reminded us that it was time
to be moving. I walked with him up to the fold.
The sheep appeared to resent my presence, and did
not follow so closely at his heels as on their way
down the valley earlier in the day. I watched him as
he counted them and secured them for the night.
And then he took me to his shepherd-hut some dis-
tance up the hillside. It was dusk by the time we
reached it. He took down a lamp from the shelf and
lit it. It was an odd little lamp, shaped like a tiny
urn, and the wick protruded from the spout. It
smoked horribly. He had gone to the back of the

24 The Uttermost Star

hut for some sticks with which to Hght his fire.
When he returned and found the place reeking with
the evil odour of the smoke, he was angry with the
lamp, and, lighting another, he blew this one out and
flung it unceremoniously back to the shelf. The
second lamp burned beautifully; the fire blazed up;
and all the room was bright.

Light! It was a vision of Light!

After awhile the shepherd walked with me up the
valley to my temporary home. It was a glorious
starlit night : such a night as only the Orient knows.
I bade him good-night at the door; and we parted.
He went back to his hut and to his fold. I, tired out,
went straight to bed. And that night I dreamed.

I dreamed of the broken reed, crushed and crum-
pled in the shepherd's hands, that I had seen floating
away on the stream.

And I dreamed of the lamp, the smoking lamp,
extinguished so ruthlessly by the shepherd's hand,
that I had seen thrown in disdain back to the shelf.

Ill

I have been on a visit to the Land of Long Ago.
In a trice I crossed wellnigh thirty centuries. I
found myself in old Jerusalem. And near the
Beautiful Gate of the Temple I saw a crowd gath-
ered together. And with wild, seraphic fire a
prophet was addressing them. *He is coming!' he
cried. 'He is coming ! The King is coming ! The

The Uttermost Star 25

Redeemer is coming! The Messiah is coming! He
shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to
be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall He
not break, and the smoking lamp shall He not
quench — '

I was so startled that I hurried back across the
centuries and sat down in this quiet study of mine
to think.

*A bruised reed shall He not break !' I thought of
the reed, crumpled in the shepherd's hand, that I
had seen floating on that Syrian stream.

*A smoking lamp shall He not quench!' I
thought of the lamp tossed in contempt upon the
shepherd's shelf.

What could it mean? What could it mean?

IV

And then I saw what it all meant. The shepherd's
way is the easy way. He snatches at the bruised
reed, crushes it, and tosses it away on to the moving
waters. And he takes another that has never been
bruised, and from it he draws his melodies. He
flings the smoking lamp back to the shelf and takes
a new and faultless one, and from it he gets the light
that fills his home with brightness. Anybody could
do that. But the Good Shepherd of whom the
prophet speaks takes the hard way. With infinite
pity and infinite patience He works away at the
bruised reed until from it He woos the eternal
harmonies. With infinite pity and infinite patience

26 The Uttermost Star

He trims and cleans the smoking lamp until from it
He draws the light that never was on sea or shore.

The bruised reed! The bruised reed represents
the things that have never been of any use; the
things that are marred in the making. From the
bruised reed He gets His choicest harmony !

The smoking lamp! The smoking lamp repre-
sents the things that have been useful, but have lost
the usefulness they had. Once luminous, they have
become loathsome; once shining, they now smoke.
From the smoking lamp He gets His clearest light!

From the bruised reed — Harmony!

From the smoking lamp — Light!

And Harmony and Light, as I saw from the
shores of the uttermost star, are the two greatest
things in the universe.

Ill

PICKING UP THE PILE LIGHT

To passengers below — dressing in the cabins or
breakfasting in the saloon — the measured and
rhythmic throb of the engines was the only indica-
tion that the great ship was in motion. After a
smooth and uneventful run across the Bass Straits,
the Loongana was gliding swiftly across the broad,
unruffled waters of Port Philip Bay. In an hour's
time we confidently hoped to be greeting friends
ashore. But just then, to our profound disappoint-
ment, the unexpected happened. Right ahead of
us a long, low, leaden bank of fog lay languidly
across the waters, blotting out all trace of land.
The Loongana pushed her bows straight into it, and
in a few minutes we could scarcely see the vessel's
length in any direction. Clouds of grey, misty
vapour drifted to and fro; and nothing was visible
to us but a narrow circle of sea. The bells in the
engine-room rang out sharply, communicating to
the powerful turbines below the will of the officer
high up on the bridge. The ship perceptibly
slackened her pace. The bells rang out again, and
the ship moved still more slowly. She simply

27

28 The Uttermost Star

crawled. Her loud and raucous syren proclaimed
to all the craft in the vicinity her sure approach.
Every few minutes great, ghostly ships, lying at
anchor, sprang suddenly out of the mist. We were
almost up to them before we saw their tall and
shadowy masts looming spectrally above us. More
ringing of bells, and the engines stopped altogether.
Then, after a pause, we crept cautiously forward
again, like a man groping his way in the dark.
The apparitions that came suddenly upon us, and
that as suddenly vanished again, were all of them
the ghosts of things movable. From not one of
them could we glean any sure knowledge as to our
exact position. Here is a clumsy old dredge;
there lies a tall ship riding at anchor; yonder is a
snorting little motor-boat. But nothing fixed;
nothing stable; nothing reliable. We are whelmed
in uncertainty. A little later came the change which
I have set out to describe ; but at this stage we were
enveloped in the haze and surrounded by objects
from which our position could not with confidence
be reckoned.

Such an experience has three perils. There is
the danger of getting into shallow water and going
aground; there is the danger of running down some
other vessel; and there is the danger of being our-
selves run down. All three of these disasters are
fairly common. I fancy I have noticed that the
people who get into the shallows of life, and become
stranded there, are invariably people who were

Picking Up the Pile Light 29

getting on very rapidly without being quite certain
of their course. Although the horizon was by no
means clear, and no fixed objects stood bravely out
to guide them, they found a certain exhilaration in
continuing at topmost speed. Unhappily, in such
cases, the exhilaration does not last ; there is nothing
particularly exhilarating in being stuck in the mud !
And, worse still, there is certainly nothing very
exhilarating in being fast on a jagged reef! In
either of these situations, a ship becomes a misery
to herself and a menace to all the craft around her.

I remember, years ago, seeing the Elginshire hard
and fast on the rocks on the east coast of New
Zealand. She had been wrecked on her maiden
trip. There she stood, a fine vessel, as erect as a
ship in port! It seemed incredible that, looking so
trim and taut, she was nevertheless wrecked beyond
redemption. The New Zealand Government event-
ually ordered her to be blown up, lest other ships,
seeing her lying there in apparent safety, should be
decoyed by her to a similar fate. On the whole it
is better to forfeit the exhilaration and to proceed
slowly, with bells clanging and syrens screaming.

And then of course, there is the risk of a colli-
sion. It would be distinctly unpleasant to see, loom-
ing darkly out of the mist, and bearing down upon
us, the gigantic proportions of some huge liner,
several times as large as our own ship ! It was thus
that the Empress of Ireland perished in the fog on
the St. Lawrence a few years ago. These deafening

30 The Uttermost Star

blasts on the syren are a contrivance for our own
protection and for other people's. George Mac-
Donald tells of a blind man who always carried
a lantern. People used to ask him of what use the
lantern could be to his sightless eyes. *I do not
carry it,' he replied, *to prevent my stumbling over
others, but to keep them from stumbling over me!'
The man who, uncertain as to his course, goes
calmly on, without in any way expressing his per-
plexity, is courting a most terrible disaster. By his
very silence he may easily destroy his own ship —
or somebody else's.

Yes, his own or somebody else's; and other
people's ships are worth thinking about. Once,
in my New Zealand days, I revisited England.
Shall I ever forget the excitement of sighting the
English coast and of anchoring in Plymouth Sound?
We sent telegrams to the home folks, telling them
the exact hour at which they might expect us next
day. Then once more the great ship stood out to
sea and began her voyage up the Channel. And,
off the Nore, down came the fog! Down, too, to
our unspeakable disgust, went the anchor! There
we waited and waited and waited, half deafened by
the screamings and hooting^s of the horns that
answered to our own, and half blinded by the frantic
efforts that we made to pierce the all-enshrouding
mists and see the land near by! Presently the cap-
tain came sauntering along the deck, a picture of
colossal calm.

Picking up the Pile Light 31

'This is very exasperating,' I observed. *We sent
sent telegrams from Plymouth, telling the people at
home when to meet us, and they'll be waiting at the
docks now. Is there no possibility of getting on?'

'AH very fine for you!' the skipper replied
cheerily. 'You are on a ten-thousand ton liner.
And you would like me to go on up the river,
crumpling up everything we happen to strike as
though it were made of brown paper! No, no;
we've got the other ships to think of 1'

To be sure ! We have the other ships to think of.
Many a time since, when the thick fogs have en-
veloped me, and I have been uncertain of my course,
and have nevertheless been tempted to go full steam
ahead, I have recalled the old sea captain's rebuke.
There are others to think of.

But I spoke just now of the change that came
later. It came quite suddenly. All at once the
clamorous bells in the engine-room became busy
again. The powerful turbines at the stern are once
more churning the water into foam, and very soon a
broad wake lies out behind the steamer. She is
moving forward, not timorously, but with obvious
confidence. What has happened to effect so striking
a change? Ah! Away to the right we can make
out through the haze the rude, ungainly timbers of
the Pile Light. It is not much to look at; but it is
at least a fixture. It is something to argue from.
A shag stands perched upon it, craning his neck
and staring timidly at us. Perhaps the strange

32 The Uttermost Star

appearance of the enshrouded ship alarms him, for,
when we get abreast of him, he spreads his wings
and, keeping close to the surface of the water, flies
to a more distant perch. Going at this rate we soon
penetrate the bank of fog. The land breaks sud-
denly upon us. We are out in the sunshine again.
The low, leaden wall of mist lies gloomily across the
bay behind us. Before us are wharves, houses, trees,
the entrance to the river, and the city in the dis-
tance. The sighting of the Pile Light made just all
the difference.

It always does. He is the skilful mariner whose
vigilant and practised eye is swift to discern, amidst
the haze of shifting things, life's fixed and stable
qualities. The captain on the bridge saw the Pile
Light long before I did. I felt the new and confident
movement of the ship, and looked about in surprise
for an explanation of the change. The sighting of
the Pile Light marked the transition from doubt to
certainty. And life knows no greater transition
than that. Those who have followed the adventures
of George Fielding in It is Never Too Late to Mend
will remember the search for the lost cattle. George
took Jacky, the black fellow, and they set out under
a broiling Australian sun. Presently Jacky broke
the silence abruptly.

*I find one,' said he.

* Where? Where?' cried George, looking all
round. Jacky pointed to a rising ground at least
six miles off.

Picking up the Pile Light 33

George groaned. 'Are you making a fool of
me ? I can see nothing but a barren hill with a few
great bushes here and there. You are never taking
those bushes for beasts?'

Jacky smiled with utter scorn. 'White fellow
stupid fellow ; he see nothing.'

'Well, and what does black fellow see?' snapped
George.

'Black fellow see a crow coming from the sun, and
when he came over there he turned and went down
and not get up again a good while. Then black
fellow say, "I think!" Presently come flying one
more crow from that other side where the sun is not.
Black fellow watch him, and when he come over
there he turn round and go down too, and not get
up a good while. Then black fellow say, "I
know!" '

They tramped the six miles, climbed the hill,
and found one of George's best bullocks at its last
gasp, with tongue protruding, a crow perched upon
its ribs.

7 think!' said Jacky to himself; and in his uncer-
tainty he simply sauntered by his puzzled master's
side, and kept his eyes wide open.

7 know!' said Jacky; and with that brave con-
fession came his master's enlightenment and a new
and brisker pace.

7 think!' said the captain of the Loongana; and
we crawled slowly and painfully and cautiously
forward.

34 The Uttermost Star

7 know!' said the captain of the Loongana on
sighting the Pile Light; and the whole behaviour
of the ship was changed.

Life holds few greater transitions than that not-
able transition from the realm of 7 think!' to
the realm of 7 know!' Carlyle never forgot the
hour of that transition. 'It is from that hour,' he
says, 'that I date my spiritual new birth, or Bapho-
metic Fire-Baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon
began to be a man!' 'What was it,' asks Dr.
Fitchett, in his Life of Wesley, 'what was it that
happened in that little room in Aldersgate Street on
the night of May 24, 1738? Something did happen;
something memorable; something enduring. It
changed Wesley's life. It transfigured weakness
into power. Nay, it did something more : it changed
the course of history.' And what was it? It was,
Dr. Fitchett says, the passage of Wesley's soul from
the realm of doubt to the realm of certainty. That
night Wesley sighted the Pile Light; caught a
glimpse of things that are immovable; and his life
took on a new spirit and a new temper in conse-
quence.

A very similar experience visited the soul of John
Bunyan. 'After I had been in this miserable
condition some three or four days, as I was sitting
by the fire, I suddenly felt this word to sound in
my heart, "I must go to Jesus/' At this my former
darkness and atheism fled away, and the blessed
things of heaven were set in my view. While I

Picking up the Pile Light 35

was on this sudden thus overtaken with surprise,
**Wife," said I, ''now I know! / know!" Oh,
that night was a good night to me. I never knew
but few better. I longed for the company of some
of God's people, that I might have imparted to
them what God had showed me. Christ was a
precious Christ to my soul that night. I could
scarce lie in bed for joy and peace and triumph
through Christ!' Bunyan had sighted the Pile
Light.

It is wonderful how little we need to see. The
captain on the bridge could not see the land, nor the
houses, nor the trees, nor any of the thousand and
one things that he could generally see from that
spot. But he could see one fixed object, and that
sufficed him. I used to think that, before my soul
could move forward with confidence, she must see
everything. I thought that, before I could venture
with any assurance upon the religious life, I must
understand the story of Creation, must grasp the
wonder of the miracles, must have some theory of
the Atonement, must understand the Inspiration of
the Scriptures, and must be able to prove the immor-
tality of the soul. I fancied that it was necessary,
before proceeding with confidence, to see the trees
and the houses and the towers of the distant city.
'Unless all these are clear to me,' I said to myself,
*I can never make the port!' I have since dis-
covered my mistake. I do not need to see the houses
and the trees and the things along the shore ; I only

36 The Uttermost Star

need to see the Pile Light. I do not need to see
everything; I only need to see something.

I have a life with Christ to live,

But, ere I live it, must I wait
Till learning can clear answer give

Of this and that book's date?
I have a life in Christ to live,

I have a death in Christ to die ;
And must I wait till Science give

All doubts a full reply?

Nay, rather, while the sea of doubt

Is raging wildly round about.

Questioning of life and death and sin,

Let me but creep within

Thy fold, O Christ, and at Thy feet

Take but the lowest seat.

And hear Thine awful voice repeat

In gentlest accents, heavenly sweet,

'Come unto Me and rest;

Believe Me and be blest 1*

That is all; but it is enough. It is not every-
thing; but it is the Pile Light standing out bravely
through the mist. As soon as we saw the Pile Light,
we quickly left the fog behind us. So did Bunyan.
'Wife,' said he, 'I must go to Jesus!' And 'at
this my former darkness and atheism fled away,
and the blessed things of heaven were set in my
view.' That is the precise counterpart of our expe-
rience in the Bay.

'What are your speculations ?' asked a friend who
stood beside the death-bed of Michael Faraday.

Picking up the Pile Light 37

^Speculations?' he replied in astonishment. *Spec-
ulations? I have none. I know whom I have be-
lieved. I rest my soul upon certainties !'

It is a great thing, when the mists of death are
closing in on every side, to approach the last report
with the outline of the Pile Light in full view !

IV

MARJORIE

Marjorie is ninety-two, although you would never
suspect it. Her hair is as black as it was when, more
than seventy years ago, her tall young lover first
stroked it. Marjorie is English — as English as
English can be. The fact stares you in the face as
soon as you put your hand to the latch of her gate.
For the littk front garden is the condensed essence
of England. It is as English as the garden of a
Kentish cottage. You inhale the scent-laden Eng-
lish air as you walk down the path to Marjorie's
door. You drink in the fragrance of the roses and
the wallflowers, the sweet-peas and the jasmine,
the carnations and the gillyflowers, the musk and
mignonette; and then, as you pause for a moment
in the porch, awaiting the opening of the door, the
soft petals of the honeysuckle brush against your
face. They must all be flowers of rich perfume to
be of any use to Marjorie now, for Marjorie is blind.
I had been in conversation with her for some time
before I realized that the eyes that seemed to look
so wistfully into mine were unable to convey any
impression to her alert and hungry mind. Her
sightless eyes and the slight stoop at the shoulders

38

Marjorie 39

are the only indications that she gives you of her
heavy burden of years. She cannot see the pictures
on the wall, representing the scenes of her childhood
— the village street with its comfortable inn and its
odd medley of stores; the thickly wooded lane in
which she so often found nuts and blackberries; the
fields of golden buttercups; and the village green
with its rustic seats and shady grove of oaks. She
cannot see these pictures now; but she says that
the scenes all come back to her, as clearly as if she
had visited them yesterday, when she sits out in the
porch, luxuriating in the fragrance of the flowers,
listening to the droning of the bees, and enjoying the
song of the thrush who sings to her from his perch
in the lilac by the side of the house.

Even if I, like Marjorie, live to be ninety-two, I
shall never forget that first visit that I paid her.
It came about very simply. *I wish,' said a gentle-
man, as he left the service on Sunday morning, *I
wish you could find time to call on my old mother.
She would appreciate it.' He gave me the address,
and I set out the very next day, little dreaming that
so very ordinary a mission was destined to bring
into my life so wealthy an enrichment. Very
abruptly sometimes life's casual ministries unlock
for us the gates of gold. We turn a bend in a dusty
road, and catch a glimpse of Paradise. We reach
unexpectedly the brow of a hill, and obtain a vision
of infinity. So was it with me that day.

As I sat in the cosy little parlour awaiting the old

40 The Uttermost Star

lady's entrance, I expected that I should have to
make the conversation, and I wondered how I could
best secure that it should serve some profitable end.
I smile now at the ignorance that led me into such
a line of cogitation. I had not then met Marjorie.
When she entered the room, the conversation made
itself. I had simply nothing to do with it. I came
to minister; but I found myself being ministered to.
Not for a moment do I suggest that Marjorie was
what Bunyan would call a brisk talker on matters
of religion. She was far too reverent and far too
modest for that. I mean rather that she had some-
thing really great to say, and she said it really
greatly. Hers was the grand style, glorified by
transparent sincerity. Her speech was dignified
and stately, whilst her voice was tremulous with
deep emotion. There was a majesty about her very
diction. She employed phrases that are never now
heard, and that are only to be found in the mellow
pages of a school book never now read. Outside
a second-hand bookshop you may often see a box
into which the desperate dealer has thrown all his
rubbish, offering it to an unappreciative public at
a nominal price of a penny a volume. To turn over
this ill-assorted collection of literary flotsam and
jetsam is as interesting and pathetic as to wander
through the casual ward of a workhouse. No two
cases are alike, yet all have come to this! Here in
the box is a Spanish grammar, badly torn; there,
too, is the second part of a three-volume novel.

Marjorie 41

Like Euclid's ideal circle, it is without beginning and
without ending. Yonder is the guide-book to a
long- forgotten exhibition. Such a higgledy-piggledy
box! But if you delve a little more deeply, you
will be sure to come upon some old volumes of
eighteenth-century sermons. The leather backs are
badly broken, and the leaves are yellow with age.
But if you will sacrifice the necessary penny and go
to the trouble of carrying one of these old volumes
home, you will find the very vocabulary to which I
listened as I sat that day in Marjorie's pretty little
parlour. Yet, as this dead language fell from
Marjorie's lips, it came to life again! It was full
of energy and vigour; it was instinct with spiritual
significance and with holy passion. It throbbed and
quivered and glowed and flashed. It was as if some
ancestral castle that had stood deserted and gloomy
for a century had been suddenly inhabited, and was
now ablaze with light and vibrant with shouts and
laughter. The antique phrases simply sparkled
with vitality as they tripped from her tongue. It
was, as I say, a great story greatly told. Marjorie
had been buffeted in a long, stern struggle; she had
known heart-break and agony and tears; yet her
memory remained at ninety-two absolutely un-
clouded, and her lip retained its power of forceful
utterance. And sitting there in her cosy parlour,
whilst the breath of the garden came pouring in
through the open window, did Marjorie unfold to
me the treasures of her rich experience.

42 The Uttermost Star

*Ah, yes/ she replied, with a smile, when I made
some reference to the remarkable length of her
pilgrimage, *I was only a girl when I entered into
the sweetness of religion.* The phrase, illumined
by that bright though sightless smile, and interpreted
by accents so full of feeling, fastened upon my
memory at once. 'The sweetness of religion/ *I
was only a girl when I entered into the sweetness of
religion!' And then she went on to tell me of the
rapture of her first faith. Seventy-five years earlier,
religion had come into her life like a great burst of
song. Amidst the sunshine of an English summer-
time, whilst the fields were redolent of clover and
of new-mown hay, her girlish soul had sought and
found the Saviour. Instantly the whole world had
stood transfigured. Her tongue seemed to catch
fire as she told me of the radiant experiences of those
never-to-be-forgotten days. I saw, as I listened,
that the soul has a rhetoric of its own, an eloquence
with which no acquired oratory can compare. She
told of the joy that she found in her own secret
communion with the Lord, sometimes in the quiet-
ude of her little room — the room w^ith the projecting
lattice window from which she loved to watch the
mists rising from the hollow as the sun came up over
the hills; sometimes down among the alders along
the banks of the stream, sitting so still that the
rabbits would scurry up and down the green banks
without taking the slightest notice of her; some-
times in long, delicious rambles across the open park

Marjorie 43

— rambles in which she was only disturbed by the
swish of a frightened pheasant or the tramp of
fallow deer; and sometimes amidst the leafy
seclusion of the primrosed woods. And often, at
sunset, when Dapple and Brownie had been milked,
and the tea-things put away, she would take her
knitting and saunter down the dusty old road. And
as, one by one, the stars peeped out, and the nightin-
gale called from the woods in the valley, and glow-
worms shone in the grass under the hedge, and a bat
flapped and fluttered in its queer flight round her
head, it seemed as though the miracle of Emmaus
were repeated, and Jesus came and walked with her.
She spoke of the wonders that, under such con-
ditions, broke upon her spirit like a light from
heaven. Her Bible became a new book to her; and
an unspeakable glory fell upon the village sanctuary,
the dearest spot on earth to her in those days of long
ago. A wave of happy recollection sw^ept over her
as she told of the walks along the lanes and across
the fields, in the company of a group of kindred
spirits, to attend those simple but memorable
services. The path led through a tossing sea of hare-
bells and cowslips; the lane was redolent of
hawthorn and sweet-brier. As they made their
way to the church that peeped shyly through the
foliage of the clump of elms on the hill, the solemn
monotone of its insistent bell mingled with the
chatter of the finches in the hedges and the blither
note of the lark high up in the blue. Marjorie's

44 The Uttermost Star

blind eyes almost shone as she recalled, and, with
glowing tongue, recounted, all these precious and
beautiful memories. 'I was only a girl,' she said,
'when I entered into the sweetness of religion!'

*But,' I interjected, *you speak of the sweetness
of religion as though it were a thing of long ago.
Do you mean that it became exhausted? Did that
happy phase of your Christian experience fade
away?'

A cloud passed over her face like the shadow that,
on a summer's afternoon, will sometimes float over
the corn.

*0h, well, you know,' she replied, after a thought-
ful pause, 'the tone of one's life changes with the
years. I left my girlhood behind me. I married;
children came to our home in quick succession; life
became a battle rather than a frolic; and sometimes
the struggle was almost grim. Then troubles fell
thick and fast upon me. In one dreadful week I
buried two of my boys, one on the Tuesday and the
other on the Friday. Then, last of all, my husband,
the soul of my soul, the best man I have ever known,
was snatched rudely from my side.'

Marjorie hid her face for a moment in her hands.
At last my impatience compelled me to break the
silence.

*And do you mean,' I inquired, 'do you mean
that, under the stress of all this sorrow, you lost the
sweetness of religion f

'Well,' she replied thoughtfully, 'under such con-

Marjorie 45

ditions you would scarcely speak of sweetness. I
would rather say that, during those sterner years,
I entered into the power of religion/

A ring, almost of triumph, came into her voice.

*Yes,' she said, 'in those years I entered into
the power of religion. Only once did my faith really
stagger. It was on the night of that second funeral
— that second funeral within a single week! I was
kneeling in my own room on the spot on which I had
knelt, morning and evening, through all the years.
But I could not pray. I felt that God had failed
and forsaken me. My shrine was empty, and I
burst into tears. And then, all at once, a Hand
seemed laid gently upon my shoulder and a Voice
sounded in my ear. *'Am I a man that I should
lie?" it said. I was startled. I felt chastened and
rebuked. I had treated Him as though He were
no wiser than I, and as though He had broken His
word. Then, through my tears, I prayed as I had
never been able to pray before. A great peace
soothed my broken spirit. I was ashamed of my
distrust. It was the only time my faith had
wavered. No; I should not speak of sweetness as I
recall those years of bitter sorrow and sore struggle.
In those days I entered into the power of religion!'

'But now look, Marjorie,' I pleaded, 'you tell me
that, as a girl, you entered into the sweetness of
religion, and that, in the graver years that followed,
you entered into the power of religion. But your
girlhood and your struggle have both passed now,

46 The Uttermost Star

and here you are in this quiet little cottage looking
back across the intervening years at those far-away
periods. Would you say that you now enjoy the
sweetness or the power?'

Her face shone; it was almost seraphic. Her
whole being became suddenly animated and
luminous. She reached out her hands towards me
as though she held something in each of them.

'I have them both!' she cried in a perfect trans-
port of delight. 'I have them both! The sweetness
that I knew in my English girlhood has come back
to me in the days of my old age; and the power that
came to me in the years of trial and loss has never
since forsaken me. I have them both; oh, bless
His holy Name, / have them both!'

It was too much for her. Overcome by the rush
of recollection and the tempest of exultant emotion,
she sank back in her chair and lapsed into silence.

*Why, Marjorie,' I said, *you have given me the
very thing I wanted. As I walked along the road I
was wondering what I should preach about on
Sunday. But I know now. I shall preach on those
words from the swan-song of Moses in which the
old leader, in laying down his charge, bears grateful
witness to God's goodness to Israel. "He made
him," he says, "to suck honey out of the rock." I
was reading in a book of travel only yesterday that
in the Orient the wild bees store their honey in the
crevices among the cliffs, and on a hot day you may
see it trickling down the face of the granite in shin-

Marjorie 47

ing streams of sweetness ! As a girl, you say, you
entered into the sweetness of religion. As a girl,
girl-like, you gave little thought to the rock itself,
but you loved to taste the sweetness of the honey.
You entered into the sweetness of religion! But, as
a woman, in the turmoil and tussle of life, buffeted
and storm-beaten, you forgot the honey that oozed
from the cracks and fissures, and were glad to feel
the massive strength of the rock itself beneath your
feet. You entered into the power of religion! And
now, the fury of the storm all overpast, you tell me
that you still rest upon the great rock, rejoicing in
its firmness; and, as in your earlier days, you once
more enjoy the honey that exudes from its recesses.
You enjoy both the strength and the sweetness ; you
have them both! *'With honey out of the rock have
I satisfied thee!" I shall certainly preach on that
text on Sunday !'
And I did.

V

CAMOUFLAGE

New occasions teach new duties — and new dictions.
The War has given us a new word, and a very
interesting one. 'Camouflage' has become a
commonplace. In its original French setting it
simply means to be concealed in smoke. I fancy I
detect in it a hint that very noisome things may be
made to serve very noble ends. The big battleships
certainly thought so. When harassed by the fatal
but elusive submarines, the huge Dreadnoughts
hid themselves behind thick screens of impenetrable
smoke, and were saved by camouflage. Having
once been applied to tactics of the kind, the vivid
expression was soon used to connote a multitude of
similar manoeuvres. Guns cunningly concealed
amidst waving forestry; men smothered with wisps
of hay or fronds of fern or twigs of trees; ships
painted with fantastic designs, calculated to conceal
their true identity, — all this has come to be known
as camouflage. Ian Hay quotes Major Wagstaffe
as saying that 'you can now disguise anything as
anything. For instance, you can make up a battery
of six-inch guns to look like a flock of sheep, and

48

Camouflage 49

herd them into action browsing. Or you can dis-
patch a scouting party across No Man's Land
dressed up as pillar-boxes, so that a deluded enemy,
instead of opening fire with a machine-gun, will
merely post letters in them — valuable letters, con-
taining military secrets !' This, surely, is the perfec-
tion of camouflage !

If, however, the word is new to us, the thing itself
is as old as the hills. Has not Sir Walter Scott told
us how, at Flodden, the Scottish army set fire to its
tents and charged the English host under cover of
the smoke? Moreover, camouflage is the watch-
word of the wilds. In his Tropical Africa Henry
Drummond does not use the word, but he has a
chapter about it all the same. Nature, he says, is one
vast system of imposture. ^Carlyle in his black-
est visions of shams and humbugs among human-
kind never saw anything so finished in hypocrisy as
the naturalist finds in every tropical forest. There
are to be seen creatures, not singly, but in tens of
thousands, w^hose very appearance, down to the mi-
nutest spot and wrinkle, is an affront to truth, whose
every attitude is a pose for a purpose, and w^hose
whole life is a sustained lie. Before these master-
pieces of deception the most ingenious of human
impositions are vulgar and transparent. Fraud is
not only the great rule of life in a tropical forest, but
the one condition of it.' And then he proceeds to
give examples. One day he found a bit of dried
grass lying on his shoulder. The natives cried out in

50 The Uttermost Star

alarm and pointed to it. Drummond could not
understand their excitement. He picked up the
grass and examined it. They cried out that it was
*chirombo' — it was alive ! He was incredulous, but
they soon proved to him that their statement was
true. It was an insect practising camouflage. Half
a dozen pages farther on the Professor gives a
photograph of a leaf-insect. To look at the picture,
you could declare that it was a leaf, pure and simple.
The shape is the shape of a leaf; there is the stem,
sturdy at the base and tapering away towards the
point ; there are the fibres running out from the main
stem towards the rough edges; in every minutest
particular the thing is a precise replica of the leaves
round about it. But, again, it is an insect — an
insect practising camouflage ! And then the narra-
tive takes an almost tragic turn. One of the most
beautiful and ornate of all the tropical reptiles, and
one of the most deadly, is the puff-adder. 'It is
essentially a forest animal, its true habitat being
among the fallen leaves in the deep shade of the trees
by the banks of streams. Now, in such a position,
at the distance of a foot or two, its appearance so
exactly resembles the forest bed as to be almost
indistinguishable from it. I was once just throwing
myself down under a tree to rest when, stooping to
clear the spot, I noticed a peculiar pattern among the
leaves. I started back in horror to find a puff-adder
of the largest size, its thick back only visible, and its
fangs within a few inches of my face as I stooped.

Camouflage 51

It was lying concealed among fallen leaves so like
itself that, but for the exceptional caution which in
African travel becomes a habit, I should certainly
have sat down upon it, and to sit down upon a puff-
adder is to sit down for the last time.' The loath-
some brute was practising a camouflage which al-
most deprived the world of one of the most
gracious and inspiring ministries of the nineteenth
century.

But we need not have gone to Central Africa.
Camouflage is everywhere. I find it in my Bible.
David resorted to camouflage on a very famous
occasion. He was a monarch, and he tried to pass
himself off as a maniac! *He feigned himself mad
in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the
gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard.'
David Livingstone's great-grandfather, Gavin
Hunter, was once thrown into Hamilton Jail for a
technical offence which, in point of fact, was rather
to his credit than otherwise. But just at that time
all prisoners were being shipped off to the wars or
to the plantations. Poor Gavin was in great trouble.
He thought of his wife and his three little children,
who would starve if he were sent overseas. In his
distress he turned to his Bible, and chanced to light
upon this very passage concerning David. He
resolved to adopt a similar ruse. When the sergeant
visited his cell, he was astounded. Then, pitying
poor Gavin, he interrupted his ravings by asking a
question. 'Tell me, gudeman,' he said, 'are you

52 The Uttermost Star

really out of your mind? I'll befriend you.' Gavin
detected a note of sympathy in his voice, and told
the whole story. The sergeant reported the affair
to the officer in charge of the jail, who visited Gavin
in person. 'Tak' that, gudeman,' he said, giving
him some silver, 'and gang awa' hame to your wife
and your weans!' David Livingstone's mother
told her distinguished son this story of successful
camouflage on her death-bed, in the course of the
explorer's visit to Scotland in 1864. 'Ay,' she said,
smiling, *and mony a prayer went up from our hame
for that sergeant, for my grandfather was an unco
godly man. He never had so much money in his
life before!' A curious story this of deliverance
and enrichment by way of camouflage.

I confess to a little surprise that Professor Drum-
mond should charge the leaf-insect, the puff-adder,
and all the other artists of the wild with hypocrisy.
Are they really hypocritical? We must distinguish
between things that differ; and there is all the
difference In the world between camouflage and
hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is the attempt of a mean
thing to pass Itself off as a mighty thing; camouflage
is the attempt of a mighty thing to pass Itself off as a
mean thing. If a cloud of smoke tries to pass itself
off as a battleship, that Is hypocrisy; but If a battle-
ship tries to pass Itself off as a cloud of smoke, that
Is camouflage ! If a fallen tree tries to pass itself off
as a big gun, that Is hypocrisy; but If a big gun tries
to pass itself off as a fallen tree, that Is camouflage!

Camouflage 53

Aesop has a fable entitled 'The Ass in the Lion's
Skin.' Now an ass in a lion's skin is not practising
camouflage; he is playing the hypocrite, that is all.
But if, on the other hand, a lion were to don the skin
of an ass, he would be resorting to camouflage! If
a scarecrow ever scared a crow — and there is no
record of such a wild improbability — he scared him
by his downright hypocrisy. But if, in order to
watch a house in which a burglary is expected, a
detective posts himself in the garden in the guise of
a scarecrow, that detective is practising the arts of
camouflage ! There is clearly an essential difference
between an old broom and a suit of clothes mas-
querading as a man, and a man pretending to be only
an old broom and a suit of clothes. The one is a
humbug; the other is a tactician.

The most pathetic instance known to me of the
use of camouflage occurs in Ian Maclaren's Dnims-
heugWs Love Story. All the Glen knew Drums-
heugh as the man of the close fist, mean, hard, nig-
gardly. He drove every bargain to the uttermost
farthing. At last he grew to be old; he was nearly
eighty. He looked round and discovered that all the
comrades of his early days, and all the friends of his
lustier years, had dropped into their graves — all but
one. That one was William Maclure, the doctor of
Drumtochty. And then a strange desire awoke the
soul of Drumsheugh. He felt that, before he too
went the way of all flesh, he should like to open his
heart to the doctor, and tell him the secret that had

54 The Uttermost Star

been buried in his breast for years. One cruel
winter's day the doctor, almost frozen, came riding
on Jess, his brave little pony, up the Glen, fighting
his way through the deep snow-drifts. Drumsheugh
called him in, sat him by the fireside and entertained
him royally. Then the two old men sat looking
into the dying embers, seeing visions of the days of
auld lang syne. The hour had come. Drumsheugh
unlocked his lips, and told his tale.

As a youth he had loved Marget, the sweetest girl
in all the Glen. He had counted it heaven to look
into her winsome face, to listen to her soft rich voice,
to watch her gentle ways. Once, in a cornfield, her
soft hand had touched his, and the thrill of that
exquisite moment had been with him all down the
years. Once she dropped a flower, and he had
treasured it, even to grey hairs. But he had never
found the courage to declare his love; and one
summer evening she met him by chance, at a stile
across the fields, and told him that she was going to
be married! Poor Drumsheugh clung to the stile,
dazed, for hours, like a man suddenly bereft of
everything.

Marget married, and everything went ill with her.
And then Drumsheugh made his brave resolve.
He scraped and pinched and saved; and sent every
penny to her through a firm of solicitors, who were
instructed to say that it came from a relative in
America. But for this, Marget would have been
turned out of house and home; she could never have

Camouflage 55

paid the doctor's bills ; she could never have sent her
boy to college.

*Drumsheugh,' cried the doctor at last, 'Drums-
heugh, ye're the maist accomplished leer 'at's ever
been born in Drumtochty, an' . . . th' best man a'
ever saw !'

Now here is the question. Was Drumsheugh a
hypocrite? How could he be a hypocrite, and yet
be the best man that the old doctor had ever seen?
He was an expert in camouflage, that was all !

But it was a mistake. Drumsheugh came to feel
that it was a mistake. Marget, an old, old woman
now, discovered the deception at last. She came to
Drumsheugh and blessed him through her tears.

'He took her hand, and made as though he would
have raised it to his lips, but, as he bent, she kissed
him on the forehead. "This," she said, ''for yir
great and faith fu' love!" '

Yes, it was a mistake. Drumsheugh felt that he
would have been happier and better if he had
contrived to maintain his noble and unselfish min-
istry to Marget without gaining for himself so
odious a reputation in the Glen. It was a poignant
anguish to him that all his old schoolfellows and
companions had gone down to their graves despising
him.

His camouflage was a mistake. Camouflage is
often a mistake. I shall never forget the night on
which I said farewell to Mosgiel. The manse — our
home through twelve long, happy years — was

56 The Uttermost Star

dismantled; the rooms were almost empty; the
walls and floors were bare. The farewell-meeting
was held. It was late when I reached home to sleep
for the last time under the old roof. Just as I was
turning into the gate a figure emerged from the
hedge. It was a woman; a young woman who,
through all my ministry, had regularly attended the
services of the church. She was weeping bitterly.
I led her into the empty manse; she sat upon one
packing-case, and I upon another.

*Oh, I've been wicked, wicked, wicked !' she cried.
*I've come to church, and gone out again, and I've
always pretended that I did not care. And when
you spoke to me, I told you that I did not wish
to be a Christian or to take any step towards
a holier life. And all the while my heart has been
aching — almost breaking. When Communion
nights came, and I saw other women remain to
partake of it, I felt that I would give the light of my
eyes to be able to sit at the Table with them; but
I went out into the dark and laughed it off. And
when, on other occasions, I saw other women help-
ing in the work, I felt that I would give all I pos-
sessed to be helping too. But I went through with
it, and always said I did not care.' It was a great
piece of camouflage; and bitterly did she repent it.
We kneeled together on the bare boards, and whilst I
prayed, her heart uttered itself in sobs of deep
contrition. And so I said farewell to my old home
and my old church, and she said farewell to her long,

Camouflage 57

long camouflage! I like to think of that closing
episode of my first ministry; and I delight in know-
ing that, whilst I have been labouring on other
shores, she has remained among the most devoted
and consistent members o\ the Mosgiel church.

VI
THE WHALER

Whales are great sport. We have all done a little
whaling in our time. I shall never forget the months
that I spent amongst lances, harpoons, reels, lines,
and blubber. There is no accounting for the
vagaries of the law of association; and oddly
enough, I cannot even think about whales without
harking back to a certain lofty haystack that stood
not very far from my old English home. I remem-
ber, as vividly as though it were but yesterday, that I
had spent a good part of one memorable winter
curled up in my father's spacious arm-chair, reading
all that R. M. Ballantyne, Mayne Reid, and Feni-
more Cooper could tell me about Red Indians and
grizzly bears. Now Red Indians and grizzly bears
are first-rate, as every schoolboy knows ; but you can
have too much even of a good thing; and, by the
time that the fields were once more golden with
buttercups, my familiarity with the furry wigwams
and the Rocky Mountains had engendered an
inevitable contempt. I had seen enough of the
scalps of the braves and the skins of the bears to last

58

The Whaler 59

me for many a long day ; and it was at this critical
juncture that a whaling story fell into my hands.
It swept me off my feet, took my soul by storm,
captivated my whole imagination. I begged,
borrowed, or bought all the tales of whaling adven-
ture that were anywhere procurable. And when-
ever, in the perusal of those thrilling pages, I heard
from the crow's-nest the rousing cry of 'There she
spouts !' I crept stealthily off to the haystack, and,
sprawling at full length, enjoyed, without interrup-
tion, the terrific excitements of the chase. My prone
body sank of its own weight into the soft and
odorous hay, rendering me quite invisible; and in
this safe retreat I was dead to all the world, and all
the world was dead to me. How many times on that
old haystack I watched the huge monster describe
his vast circles round the ship ! How many times
I held my breath as he suddenly appeared, a tense
mass of quivering rage, within a few yards of the
boat! How many times I saw the glittering har-
poon bury itself in his soft hot flesh, and heard the
shriek of the rushing line as it flew from the whir-
ring wheel ! How many times I found myself swim-
ming for dear life after the infuriated creature had
smashed our little boat to splinters! How often,
too, I felt my cheeks flush with the fierce joy of cap-
ture, and could scarcely believe my eyes when I
looked round and discovered that, instead of being
on the oily deck of a whaler, I was lying full length
on the top of a haystack!

6o The Uttermost Star

II

But how am I to account for this strange gust of
recollection? It was my Bible that started it. At
the opening of Job's penultimate chapter I came
abruptly on a question that first made me smile, and
then made me think — 'Canst thou catch a whale with
a fish-hook F' If I, as an old whaler, understand
the position rightly, it is designed, by this grotesque
interrogation, to expose some very common fallacies.
There is, for example, the folly of supposing that a
whale can be caught with a fish-hook. Every
whaler knows quite well that it is ludicrously im-
possible. As an old whaler I can bear witness to
the fact that the experience of life has taught me
that there must be a certain proportion between the
end that you hope to compass and the means that
you employ in order to attain it. I have caught
a minnow with a bent pin and a yard of string; but
I have never been able to land a salmon with that
gear. In Job the argument is pushed yet another
step. To him the capture of a whale seemed a sheer
impossibility. The ancients saw the huge beast dis-
porting himself in the blue waters; but in their
wildest imaginings they never dreamed that a day
would come in which men would seek to make him
their prey. And, indeed, it was not until about a
thousand years ago that some hardy Norseman, of
tough sinews and still tougher soul, conceived the
idea of scouring the seas in pursuit of such big game.

The Whaler 6i

Job may have listened in awe to tales that sailors
told concerning the frightful monsters they had seen
upon the deep, and, if so, he was prepared for the
question — 'Canst thou catch a whale with a fish-
hook f You can catch a minnow with a bent pin;
but not a salmon! You can catch a salmon with a
hook ; but not a whale !

Old Peggy Dodson runs a flower-stall. For many
a long year she has stood, summer and winter, at
the corner of Princes and Edgecumbe streets, just
against Barnards' great drapery store. Her violets
and jonquils are said to be the best that can be got,
and many of the great ladies who come in and out
of Barnards' slip a big bunch of them into their
motors before setting out for home. Peggy only
aims at making a couple of pounds a week just to
keep body and soul together, and she contrives to
do it by the investment of a very modest capital.
But Barnards' would not be content with a profit
of a couple of pounds a week. Mr. Edward Barnard
lives in a palatial residence out at Brockville Park.
To keep things going he needs a profit a hundred
times as large as Peggy's. And because he wishes
to draw a hundred times as much out of his business,
he puts a hundred times as much into his business.
The sum that he pays out every week in rent, wages,
and stock is amazing! But he signs those cheques
with a light heart because he knows that, by a law
that is as fixed as the law of gravitation, there must
be a certain proportion between the end that you

62 The Uttermost Star

desire to compass and the means that you employ
to attain it. You can't earn Barnards' profits by
the investment of Peggy's capital. You can't catch
whales with fish-hooks !

Many years ago I knew two sisters who were both
Sunday-school teachers. Sheila was a lively girl,
and everybody was very fond of her; but she rarely
took things seriously. On Sunday, as soon as
dinner was over, she got her Bible and her Teacher's
Helps, to see what the lesson was all about. And
then, marking a few passages that she thought might
be read aloud to the scholars, she dotted down a few
notes before scampering off to school. Sometimes,
when dinner was late, or the conversation at table
particularly interesting and protracted, she was
compelled to study the lesson as she hurried down
the streets, sometimes in company. Mary, on the
other hand, regarded her class as part of life's great
adventure. She allowed the coming Sunday's
lesson to simmer in her mind all through the week,
and found untold delight in wrestling with the
various problems it presented. She was a welcome
guest in the homes of all her boys; and if one of
them failed to appear on the Sunday afternoon,
Mary was like a hen with a missing chick. She even
wove those roguish faces into her prayers, and,
indeed, found it easier to admit them than to exclude
them. Anybody who knew the two sisters as
intimately as I did could see that Sheila was like
Old Peggy, whilst Mary was like Mr. Barnard.

The Whaler 63

Sheila put very little into her class, and drew very
little out; Mary lavished all her thought and de-
votion upon it, and found in it the delight of her
life. I have met many of those boys, now full-
grown men, during the past twenty years. It is
with difficulty that you can recall Sheila to the
remembrance of those who once sat at her feet; she
flitted into their lives and flitted out again without
leaving any permanent impression at all. But
Mary's boys brighten at the very mention of her
name. 'Whenever I have been tempted to do a
mean thing or neglect a duty,' one of them said to
me not long ago, *I have thought of her; and the
memory of her face has settled it!' And he spoke
for them all. Sheila was angling with a piece
of string and a bent pin; Mary was catching
whales !

A mere novice in the art of living must have
noticed that only the cheap prizes are cheaply won;
the really precious things of life come to us through
blood and agony and tears. And is not the kingdom
of heaven to be numbered among those exceedingly
precious things? Is it likely, therefore, that the
kingdom of heaven can be cheaply gained?

*Just put up your hand; now, while every head
is bowed ; put up your hand, and the great transac-
tion's done !'

I was passing the Miller's Point Mission-hall. A
stirring chorus led me to pause, and, after the sing-
ing, these words fell upon my ear. It is not for me

64 The Uttermost Star

to judge. I had not listened to the address that had
preceded this appeal. But, taken by themselves, the
words seemed to me to imply that the salvation of
the soul can be very cheaply secured. When I
reached home I took down my Pilgrim's Progress,
and reviewed afresh Christian's sustained and
perilous exploit. And then I turned to the New
Testament. The transition from the evangelist's
appeal to these noble volumes on my table was like
the transition from the angler's dangling line to the
stern and hazardous struggle of the whaler. For
my New Testament warns me on every page that
whales are not to be caught with fish-hooks. Gold
does not lie about the street-corners. The kingdom
of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it
by storm. I am to strive, to wrestle, to agonize,
in my resolute and persistent endeavour to enter in
at the strait gate. Only through much tribulation,
so I am told, can I hope to enter the Kingdom. The
New Testament writers were whalers, not anglers.
Their phraseology is the phraseology of the fierce
and desperate conflict; it throbs with vehemence
and intensity; it is suggestive of long and anxious
and sustained adventure. And who can help
noticing that when it tells of one who set His face,
like a flint, to win the greatest prize of all, it makes
it clear that He only attained His end, and finished
His work, and gained His crown after a struggle
unparalleled in the annals of human enterprise and
achievement?

The Whaler 65

III

It is foolish to match the mean against the mighty.
The contrast between the whale on the one hand
and the angler's puny little line on the other is
intended to provoke a smile. I should have loved
to have seen old Izaak Walton's face when, in the
course of his riverside devotions, he lit upon this
passage! How could Job angle for a whale? As
the following verses point out, 'he has no bait
w^herewith to deceive him, no hook wherewith to
catch him, no line wherewith to draw him out of the
water, no reed to run through his gills, and no thorn
on which to carry him home.' The whole conception
is extraordinary, whimsical, grotesque. It is the
wave fighting against the cliff, the mouse fighting
against the lion, the pigmy fighting against the
giant. What does it all mean?

If good old Izaak Walton, resting under the alders
on the green banks of the Itchen or the Dove,
examined the context in order to ascertain the
meaning of the curious inquiry, he must have found
himself suddenly and startlingly transported from
the realm of the ludicrous to the realm of the
sublime. For see! 'Then answ^ered the Lord unto
Job out of the w^hirlwind, and said. Canst thou catch
a whale with a fish-hook f or his tongue with a line
that thou lettest down? None is so fierce that dare
stir him up : who then is able to stand against Mef
Here is a swift transition from comedy to tragedy!
At the beginning of the drama Job loses his asses,

66 The Uttermost Star

his oxen, his camels, his children, and his health.
In the course of the years Job is tempted to murmur
against God, and to impeach the justice of the Most
High. And this is the answer that comes to him
out of the whirlwind — *Canst thou catch a whale
with a fish-hook? How then cartst thou stand
against Me?' And Job humbles himself, and
kisses the hand that he had spurned, and the great
drama closes amidst the tears and smiles of
reconciliation.

At the opening and at the close of the inspired
records I find two brave, heroic figures. In one
respect these two — Job and Paul — are very much
alike. The culminating point in the experience of
Job was his discovery that his rebellion against the
Divine Will was as futile and as foolish as the fish-
ing-line with which an angler might endeavour to
compass the destruction of a whale. The culminat-
ing point in the experience of Paul was his discovery
that his persecution of the infant Church was a raid
upon Omnipotence. 'And he fell to the earth, and
heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou Me? And he said. Who art Thou,
Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou
persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the
pricks!' And, like Job, Paul abandoned the
unequal contest, and kissed the hand that he had
sought to crucify.

*How canst thou stand against Mef said the
voice to Job.

The Whaler 67

'Why persecutest thou Mef said the voice to
Paul.

And Job and Paul both discovered that the day
on which a man submits his stubborn heart to the
will of heaven is the day on which all heaven comes
pouring into that penitent and contrite heart.

VII

A BOX OF PERFUME

The smell of things ! The smell of tilings ! What
a box of perfume this old world of ours is, to be
sure! I was reading only yesterday Mr. E. V.
Lucas's Essay on Rupert Brooke. Mr. Lucas turns
aside to chat entertainingly about his own tastes
and fancies. T find/ he says, *that, on my list of
loves, scents would take a very important place —
the scent of gorse blossoms rubbed in the hand and
then crushed against the face, the scent of geranium
leaves or the leaves of the lemon verbena, the scent
of pine-trees, the scent of unlit cigars, the scent of
cigarette smoke blown my way from a distance,
the scent of coffee as it arrives from the grocer's,
the scent of the underside of those little cushions of
moss which come away so easily in the woods, the
scent of lilies of the valley, the scent of oatcake for
cattle, the scent of lilac, and, for reasons, above all,
perhaps, the scent of a rubbish fire in the garden.'
Richard Jefferies has a notable passage of which this
forcibly reminded me. 'There ain't nothing,' he
makes his old gamekeeper say, 'there ain't nothing

68

A Box of Perfume 69

to compare with the smell of the woods. You should
just come out here in the spring and sniff up the
scent of that there oak bark. It goes right down
your throat, and preserves your lungs as the tan do
leather. And I've heard say as folks who work in
the tanyards never have no illness. There's always
a smell from the trees, dead or living, and I could
tell what wood a log was in the dark by my nose.
The air is better where the woods be. There's the
smell of the earth, too; 'specially just as the plough
turns it up. It's a fine thing; and the hedges and
the grass are as sweet as sugar after a shower.'
But enough of this! I did not set out to catalogue
the perfumes in the box; but to philosophize about
them, and especially to ask myself the reason for
their presence there.

For, only this afternoon, I was sitting with some
friends upon the lawn — itself an odorous place —
telling of the holiday tour from which I have just
returned. In doing so, I was impressed by the way
in which memory revived, and description became
easy, whenever I chanced to mention the smell of
things. The smell of the bush; the smell of the
earth; the smell of the hay; the smell of the hops;
the smell of the hedges; the smell of the gardens, —
at every such reference the beauty of the landscape
rushed back upon my mind in vivid detail; and the
tongue set off afresh with its pleasant task of
reminiscence.

I have noticed the same thing before. We have

70 The Uttermost Star

all noticed it. As Walter Savage Landor told us a

hundred years ago,

. . . sweet scents ,
Are the swift vehicles of still sweeter thoughts,
And nurse and pillow the dull memory
That would let drop without them her best stores.
They bring me tales of youth and tones of love.

Ah, to be sure, tales of youth ! As a small boy I was
sent to a private school for a year or two to prepare
for the public school to which I went later. I do
not know how long I remained there. I possess a
history-book bearing my name and the date in the
schoolmaster's handwriting. This proves that I was
there at the age of seven; but as only the earlier
pages are marked, I conclude that I must have left
for the larger school shortly after. It was often a
matter of regret to me that I could recall so little
of my first school. The whole thing seemed to have
departed from my mind. I remembered only the
exterior of the building, the death of the school-
master, and a few very hazy impressions. But one
day, more than twenty years afterwards, I was
crossing a field and detected a peculiar odour. It
arose from a plant upon which I had just trodden.
Instantly the old school stood out before my mind as
though I had only left it the day before. The porch,
the schoolroom, the desk, the huge globes in the
corner, the maps on the walls, the piano, the black-
board, and a hundred tiniest details rushed to mind
one after the other, and have remained vividly

A Box of Perfume 7 1

there ever since. The plant on which I had just
trodden grew on the green bank behind the school,
and we boys used to press the leaves in our hands
and inhale the fragrance that distilled from our
scented fingers when poring over our lessons later
on. I had never come across a plant of that species
through all the years that intervened. I must have
seen a thousand sights and heard a thousand sounds
that should have opened the floodgates of memory;
yet they had not the magic power. Their 'Open,
Sesame!' was unheeded. But the spell lurked in
the scent of the grass; and, thanks to it, my old
school is now clearly photographed upon the tablets
of my memory.

Here, then, is a singular thing: this connexion
between a breath of perfume and a wave of memory !
It does not, of course, always work out pleasantly.
No law does. One is reminded of Dickens. In his
early days he lived through a dismal and humiliating
experience. He earned his living in a blacking
factory. 'My work,' he says, 'was to cover the
pots of blacking, first with a piece of oil-paper, and
then with a piece of string; and then to clip the
paper close and neat, all round, until it looked as
smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's
shop.' During that year or so — he himself has no
notion how long it lasted — his misery was so intense
that, to the end of his days, he never referred to it.
He worked from early morning until late at night,
and could only manage to live on his meagre salary

72 The Uttermost Star

by dividing it into six little parcels, marking each
parcel with a day of the week, and steadfastly re-
fusing to break into Saturday's parcel until Saturday
came. When the hunger was unendurable, he used
to take a turn at Covent Garden and stare at the
pineapples, sniffing up as he did so the flavour of the
faded cabbage leaves that everywhere littered the
place. Close to the cellar in which he worked was a
hat factory which emitted an odour peculiarly its
own. In due course the boy was delivered from this
abject and degrading phase of his existence. But
the memory of it haunted him like a spectre. *From
that hour until this at which I write,' he says, in a
letter written many years afterwards, *from that
hour until this no word of that part of my childhood
has passed my lips. From that hour until this my
father and my mother have been stricken dumb
upon it. I have never heard the least allusion to it,
however far off and remote, from either of them.
I have never in any burst of confidence with any one,
my own wife not excepted, raised the curtain I then
dropped, thank God.' And he tells us that to the
close of his life, whenever he caught the smell of
decayed cabbage leaves, the smell of hat-making,
or the smell of blacking, a shudder ran through his
frame as he recalled his early miseries. 'I never
had the courage,' he says, 'to go back to the place.
I could not endure to go near it. For many years,
when I came near to Robert Warren's, in the Strand,
I crossed over to the opposite side of the way, to

A Box of Perfume 73

avoid a certain smell of the cement they put upon the
blacking-corks which reminded me of what I once
was.' The novelist's bitter experience is very
suggestive. The sight of hats, blacking-bottles, or
cabbage leaves seems to have had no effect upon him.
But the smell of any of them almost paralysed him.
Beside this painful illustration relating to Charles
Dickens, let me lay a pleasant illustration relating
to George Gissing. T know men,' he makes Henry
Ryecroft say, T know men who say they had as lief
read any book in a library copy as in one from their
own shelf. To me that is unintelligible. For one
thing, I know every book of mine by its scent, and I
have but to put my nose between the pages to be
reminded of all sorts of things. My Gibbon, for
instance, my well-bound eight-volume Milman
edition, w^hich I have read and read and read again
for more than thirty years, never do I open it but
the scent of the noble pages restores to me all the
exultant happiness of that moment when I received
it as a prize. Or my Shakespeare, the great Cam-
bridge Shakespeare, it has an odour which carries
me yet farther back in life; for these volumes be-
longed to my father, and before I was old enough
to read them with understanding it was often
permitted me, as a treat, to take down one of them
from the bookcase and reverently to turn the leaves.
The volumes smell exactly as they did in that old
time, and what a strange tenderness comes upon
me when I take one of them in hand !' So true is it

74 The Uttermost Star

that the smell of a thing is the soul of that thing.
It is the one vital, essential element about it. The
sight of a thing may kindle my curiosity; the sound
of a thing may arouse my interest; but the smell of
a thing, in some subtle and elusive fashion of its
own, avoids all formal avenues of approach and
takes possession of all the chambers of my mind at
once. I wonder why ? Let us get back to the wilds
and the woods again !

And here, in the wilds and the woods, let us
introduce each other to two of the citizens of that
romantic country, men who have been taken into
its confidence and initiated into its secrets. Here is
Captain C. H. Stigard, a big-game hunter ; and here
is Frank Buckland, the celebrated naturalist. Let
us take the Captain first. He has written a delight-
ful book on Hunting the Elephant in Africa. And,
oddly enough, he touches on the very point that
we have been discussing. *I believe,' he says,
'I believe the sense of smell is in much more direct
connexion with the brain than is the sense of sight.
Even with us human beings, who have lost this sense
to a great extent, there is nothing like a scent to
suddenly and vividly recall forgotten memories.
A sound or sight will appear familiar ; but the mind
will generally have to grope after what it recalls,
whilst with a scent the memory is an instantaneous
flash. P.erhaps this, then, is the reason why the
duller-witted beast responds so much more quickly
and is so much more affected by the sudden noxious

A Box of Perfume 75

smell of a human being than he is by sight.' Now
this proves — if it proves no more — that the strange
lav^ that operates in man operates no less powerfully
among his poorer relations in the field and the forest.
And it goes farther. It alleges that the nose is in
much more direct communication with the brain
than is the eye. And it is at this point that Mr.
Buckland comes to our aid, and deals with the same
point in greater detail. *In the head of a deer,' he
writes, *we find three sentinels, which are given to
the animal to warn it of danger from its enemies;
these sentinels are the nose, the eye, and the ear.'
He then proceeds to describe the formation and
mechanism of each of these organs, and finishes up
by comparing them. *I place,' he says, 'the organs
of sense in the deer's head in the following order of
development and use to their owner: i. The nose.
2. The ear. 3. The eye. These facts may be use-
ful to deer-stalkers, who, if desirous to approach
a suspicious deer, should run the chance of the deer
seeing them rather than the chance of his hearing
them; and, above all, they should avoid all possi-
bility of the deer getting notice of their presence by
the organ of smell/

Now all this is very interesting so far as it goes;
but, obviously, it does not go far enough. And it is
just at the point at which I feel the insufficiency of
all these teachers that a still more skilful master
comes to my aid. Does the New Testament say
nothing about the odours of life? In Dr. Moffatt's

76 The Uttermost Star

fine translation I find Paul speaking of the knowl-
edge of Christ as *a sweet perfume.' It is a pregnant
and suggestive phrase. You would not compare
other knowledge to a perfume. But the knowledge
of Christ is different. It is intangible, indefinable,
inexplicable, inexpressible. You can no more
describe it than you can describe the odour of violets.
For that matter, you can never describe the best
things in life. To a man who has no sense of smell,
how would you describe the perfume of roses or
boronia or lavender? To a man with no spiritual
vision, how would you describe a conversion? A
conversion is simply the response of the soul to the
'sweet perfume of Christ,' just as my recollection of
my old school was the response of my memory to the
perfume of the harrow leaf. I know that, moving
along some subtle avenue between my nose and my
brain, the odour of that leaf quickened into vigorous
life the slumbering faculties of my memory, al-
though I can no more explain how it was done than
I can fly. A man need feel, therefore, no sense of
shame when he has to confess his inability to explain
the potent spell of that lovelier, loftier fragrance.

A Persian fable says : One day
A wanderer found a lump of clay
So redolent of sweet perfume,
Its odour scented all the room.

'Who art thou?* was his quick demand.
'Art thou some gem from Samarcand,
Or spikenard in this rude disguise,
Or other costly merchandise?'

A Box of Perfume 77

'Nay ! I am but a lump of clay.'

'Then whence this wondrous sweetness — say?'

'Friend, if the secret I disclose,

I have been dwelling with the Rose.'

'Wherever I go,' says Paul, *I scatter the perfume
of His knowledge everywhere. I live for God as the
fragrance of Christ breathed alike on those who are
being saved and on those who are perishing.' I
began by saying that this lovely old world of ours is
a box of sweetest perfumes. I close by showing
that the richest and choicest aroma of them all is
diffused, not by scented shrubs or fragrant flowers,
but by noble, beautiful, gracious lives.

VIII

SLIPPERS

Slippers^ John Broadbanks was telling me, came
pretty freely to the manse during the three years
that preceded his marriage. When the ladies of
Silverstream wished to show their lonely young
minister some mark of their appreciation or affection
or compassion, it usually took the form of slippers.
It is only another instance of that spiritual insight
that is one of the principal ingredients in feminine
sagacity. They felt, perhaps, in that subconscious
or semi-conscious way peculiar to the gentle sex,
that there is a subtle but inevitable relationship
between the use a man makes of his ministry and
the use that he makes of his slippers. I will not go
so far as to say that the grace in a man's soul may
be measured by the rapidity with which he wears out
a pair of slippers; but if anybody else cares to make
that daring assertion, I shall not go out of my way
to challenge it. Whatever a young wife may forget
let her never forget to have the good man's slippers
on the fender awaiting his return. If only she can
cultivate in him the love of slippers, he will develop
into a husband of the finest stamp. The man who
is always buying new boots, yet whose slippers last

78

Slippers 79

indefinitely, must be regarded with suspicion and
distrust. His soul is not quite healthy. Slippery
people are an abomination; but slippered people
are invariably lovable folk.

A man who wears out plenty of slippers must have
an exquisitely tranquil soul. Slippers are such
restful things! They look restful; they feel restful;
they radiate rest fulness among all beholders. I do
not know what was in the apostle's mind when he
spoke of the feet being shod with the preparation of
the gospel of peace; but I know that there is nothing
that a man can wear on his feet so expressive of
peace as a pair of comfortable slippers. Such a man
appears to be on the best of terms with all men in
general and with himself in particular; he is the
personification of composure, benevolence, and
goodwill. A man would only wear slippers in a
place that he loves ; he would only wear them in the
company of people who are dear to him; he would
only read under such conditions a book in which his
soul delights. In the Correspondence of Sir Arthur
Helps there appears a letter written to Sir Arthur
by Lord Morley. The famous author has sent the
great statesman one of his books, and Lord Morley
is acknowledging the gift. 'This very night,' he
says, T shall put on my slippers and dip joyfully
into it, and go to bed full of mellow wisdom and
goodwill, which is better than anything else. I
hold slippers to be a compliment to an author,
because who in this easeful fashion would read

8o The Uttermost Star

disagreeable letters or bad books?' Who, indeed?
Why, I verily believe that all the best books were
written in slippers. It may be fancy, but when I
draw my chair up to the fire and put on my slippers
and take up some friendly volume that soon fills me
with a glow of contentment and delight, I think I
can see the pattern of the author's slippers. They
are never very bright or showy or new ; but they are
cosy and faded and loose, and just enough the worse
for wear to suggest the constancy of fond familiarity
and old friendship.

Give me the man who can look — and feel — per-
fectly at home in such a pair of slippers! The
Autocrat of the Breakfast-table divided men into
two classes. There are, he said, men of the cat class
and there are men of the squirrel class. A squirrel
is, for awhile, an engaging companion. It is full of
life, overflowing with exuberance and vitality; it
is nimble, brisk, and sprightly, leaping over every-
thing and climbing everywhere ; it is full of surprises,
and astonishes you every second by its agility and
its curious antics. But it soon tires you, and you
are glad to see it restored to its revolving cage.
Similarly, there are people with nimble and restless
minds. They are lively, jerky, and smart. Their
thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence.
*They say bright things on all possible subjects, but
their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting
half -hour with one of these jerky companions,
talking with a dull friend affords great relief. It

Slippers 8i

is like taking the cat in your lap after holding the
squirrel!' Just look at the cat lying purring
pleasantly on the hearthrug! What could be more
restful ? And look at the squirrel, already whirling
its revolving cage ! What could be more restless ?
Cats and squirrels! To pass from the squirrel-
people to the cat-people is, the Autocrat declares,
like putting a soft ground-glass shade over a lamp
whose naked glare has tortured our tired eyes be-
yond endurance.

Now, oddly enough, whilst Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes was writing The Autocrat on one side of the
Atlantic, Walter Bagehot was penning his famous
essays on the other. And, in one of the cleverest of
those delightful papers, Bagehot establishes a con-
trast between stupid people and brilliant people.
And, surprising as it may seem, he expresses a
decided preference for the former, and argues with
resistless force that the world owes incalculably
more to people who are stupid than to people who
are smart.

But we are getting a long way from home. We
set out to talk, not about squirrels, nor about stupid-
ity, but about slippers. Yet we are not so far astray
as a casual observer might suppose. For who are the
Autocrat's cat-people but the people who can feel
perfectly at home in slippers? And who are his
squirrel-people but the people who always wear
boots? And one has only to read Bagehot's essay
a second time in order to see that the contrast at the

82 The Uttermost Star

back of his mind is really the contrast between the
people who dearly love a pair of slippers, and the
people, who, wearing out cartloads of boots and
shoes, yet make a pair of slippers last them half a
lifetime.

I referred just now to Silverstream. I think I
have already said that I was often a guest at John
Broadbanks' manse. It was a pleasant drive from
Mosgiel, and we saw a good deal of each other in
those days. But I remember well a question that
one or other of the children invariably asked at
tea-time.

*Is this a "slipper" evening?' somebody would cry.

John's wife saw that I was puzzled when I heard
the question for the first time, so she hastened to my
enlightenment.

They call it a "slipper" evening,' she explained,
*when John has not to go out. If he has a meeting,
they call it a "boot" evening !"

I soon discovered which they liked best.

'Oh, it's a "boot" evening to-night, Don!' he
would say, as he rose from the table and went off to
prepare for the pending engagement ; and every face
instantly clouded. But when he announced that it
was a 'slipper' evening there were smiles and pranc-
ings and clapping of hands. For a 'slipper' evening
meant the telling of tales to the little ones and the
reading aloud to Myrtle and Jack and mother after
the babies were in bed.

I remember one afternoon strolling across the

Slippers 83

fields behind the manse with John. It was in the
early autumn. We sat down in a gap in the gorse
hedge and watched the rabbits popping in and out
among the tussocks.

That's a great idea of your youngsters/ I said,
'that distinction between ''boot" evening and
"sHpper" evening !'

'Yes,' he repHed, with a laugh, 'and it would
astonish you to know the number of books that we
get through. Sometimes, even on "boot" nights,
I manage to read to them for ten minutes or so be-
fore saddling Brownie; on "slipper" nights I read
for half an hour, or, if the story is exciting, perhaps
a little more. We began with Pilgrim's Progress.
Then we took Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family
Robinson, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Captain Cook's
Voyages, Mungo Park's Travels, and a few other
books of the same kind. During the last year or
two we have stuck pretty closely to fiction. It has
been great fun, renewing my own acquaintance with
Dickens and Scott in the company of the youngsters,
and enjoying their excitement on hearing these great
stories for the first time/

He went on to speak of the peals of laughter and
glitter of tears that greeted some of the well-known
passages in these familiar books.

'Upon my word!' he broke out again, 'it's about
the most economical way of being jolly that has ever
been invented. About this time last year I had to
go into town one day to attend a committee-meeting,

84 The Uttermost Star

and, looking in at the "Chaucer's Head" Book-
room, I picked up a very decent copy of Pickwick
Papers for a shilHng. I brought it home, and, as
soon as Myrtle saw the pictures, she made me prom-
ise to read it. Night after night, as soon as the tea-
things were washed up and put away, we all drew
our chairs to the fire, and I read one or two, or some-
times three, chapters of Mr. Pickwick's adventures.
How we laughed and cried together! We quite
pitied the people who, whilst we read, were rushing
hither and thither in search of amusement. Here
were six of us spending thirty or more evenings
crowded with profit and amusement in return for the
modest outlay of one single shilling!' And John
laughed again, so loudly this time that a pair of
rabbits that had been playing unsuspectingly a hun-
dred yards away, dashed instantly to cover.

^Before so very long,' he added reflectively, and
with a note of sadness in his voice, 'before so very
long the old nest will have to be broken up and all
my fledglings will have flown; but I really believe
that, long after they have forgotten everything else,
they will remember the "slipper" nights that we
spent by the fire together !'

And so do I. And this only confirms me in my
conviction that the world's best work is done in
slippers. When a man takes off his boots and puts
on his slippers, he gives you the impression that his
work, for the time being, at any rate, is over. But
that is only the trickery of appearances. As a

Slippers 85

matter of fact, when a man takes off his boots and
puts on his sHppers, his best work is just beginning.
John Broadbanks has done a magnificent work at
Silverstream, but I doubt if he has done anything
finer than the work that he did on his ^slipper' eve-
nings by his own fireside.

History is often made in sHppers. Take the case
of Sir Joseph Banks. The work that he did in
shppers is one of the most extraordinary and un-
paralleled achievements in the story of the Empire.
Joseph Banks accompanied Captain Cook as natural-
ist on those wonderful and epoch-making voyages
that changed the face of the world. But the work
even of the greatest navigators must, in the nature
of things, be tantalizingly superficial. Cook skirted
the coasts of immense continents, but had no time
to explore them. Banks stood on the deck of the
Endeavour and saw the shores of those vast but
unknown lands pass, like a panorama, along the
horizon, and he vowed that he would dedicate his
energies to the work of inspiring young men with a
passion for exploration. And most amazingly did
he succeed in his self-imposed task. In the days of
his retirement, living in his quiet English home, he
coaxed young men to his fireside, and, sitting there
in his slippers, he told them of the vision of unknown
continents that haunted him sleeping and waking.
Many of them went back to their homes and offices,
smiling superciliously at the old man's enthusiasm.
But on the minds of three of his listeners his story

86 The Uttermost Star

had the desired effect. He contrived to fire the
fancy, one after the other, of three young men, who,
as a result of those fireside conversations, wrote their
names in letters indelible upon the world's broad
scroll of fame. These three men were Mungo
Park, Lachlan Macquarie, and John Franklin.
Mungo Park became, under Sir Joseph's influence,
the pioneer of African exploration. He began the
work that was afterwards completed by Burton,
Speke, Livingstone, Stanley, and an army of daunt-
less and devoted pathfinders. Lachlan Macquarie,
also under Sir Joseph's influence, opened the gates
of Australia, and converted a microscopic and
insignificant settlement into a huge continental
dominion. 'I would beg of you,' said Sir Joseph
Banks to Colonel Macquarie, on the eve of his sail-
ing for Australia, 'I would beg of you to go out with
a strong resolve to open up the country and to dis-
cover and develop its resources.' Macquarie came,
and, setting himself to the task that Sir Joseph had
committed to his trust, the Blue Mountains were
soon crossed and the incalculable possibilities of the
continent revealed. It was Sir Joseph Banks, too,
who inspired Franklin with the idea of opening up
the silent seas of the Far North. In 1818 he, being
then seventy-five years of age, pleaded with the
young naval officer to devote his life to the discovery
of the North- West Passage. The nation being now
at peace, he pleaded, some of the most daring and
gallant young officers — men who had fought with

Slippers 87

Nelson at Copenhagen and Trafalgar — might now
be commissioned to search for the long-dreamed-of
waterway. The nation lent an ear to the old man's
plea; young Franklin caught the contagion of the
veteran's zeal, and, as a result, and after thirty
years' of tireless search, the North- West Passage
was discovered and sealed by the tragic and pathetic
sacrifice of its discoverers. Whenever I catch the
thrill of African exploration; whenever I feel a glow
of admiration as I contemplate the dauntless courage
of our Australian pathfinders; whenever I read
afresh that stirring record of suffering and adven-
ture in the icy polar seas, I let my mind go one step
farther back and I conjure up the image of a stately
old gentleman, sitting with slippered feet by a com-
fortable English fireside. More often than we some-
times think, history is made in slippers.

Thirty or forty years ago the friends of Dr.
Alexander Preston issued, as a memorial volume,
and for private circulation, a number of autobio-
graphical notes found in the good man's desk after
his death. In the second chapter, perhaps the most
fascinating in the book. Dr. Preston tells how he
found his way to faith and to the ministry. 'I owe
my soul,' he says, 'to no preacher or teacher. I
was born in the tiny village of Cudford Brook, and
down a little lane that ran from the village green to
the brook itself there stood a pretty old cottage.
In the summer-time the porch was a tangle of roses.
The door, even in winter, always stood open; and

88 The Uttermost Star

nobody who knew Old Duncan, as we called him,
ever thought of knocking. We walked right in, and
he was always pleased. He sat by his fire, a little
old gentleman in slippers ; and, even as a small boy,
I revelled in his company. He was interested in all
my games and my lessons, and he always knew what
I ought to do. If I was puzzled or disappointed, I
always went and told Old Duncan. He seemed to
understand boys. And he used at times to speak to
me about the kingdom of heaven. And, some-
how, he made it wonderfully attractive. He always
took it for granted that I should love his Saviour,
and his Bible, and his church, and all the things that
were so dear to him. "When you are a minister of
the Word, Sandy," he would say; and he made me
feel that that was part of the divine programme;
and, surely enough, it has all come to pass exactly
as he said!' And, later on, Preston refers again to
Old Duncan: *The red carpet slippers,' he says,
'seemed a part of him. And when he died nobody
had the heart to burn them ; so they put them where
they had almost always been, and in his slippers he
was buried!'

*A little old gentleman in slippers!' We are all
moving towards the sovereignty of the slippers.
Life itself is a march towards slippers. Happy they
who have caught the restful spirit of the slippers,
to whom the slippers represent not an imprisonment,
but — as in the case of Joseph Banks and Old Duncan
— the opportunity for a radiant sunset ministry.

IX

THE MISER OF MURDSTONE CREEK

For nearly an hour we had seen no sign of human
habitation. We were motoring along one of our
great Australian highroads, and the dense bush ran
riot everywhere. All at once we saw, right ahead
of us, a little old man, with long, shaggy beard,
leaning heavily on a stick. He had evidently
emerged from the bush on our right, and was
leisurely crossing the road. He moved slowly and
painfully until he reached the centre of the highway.
At that moment he heard, for the first time, the
throbbing of the car. He paused, glanced furtively
towards us, and then, startled and terrified, he
shambled on as quickly as he could go, diving into
the thick scrub on our left. When we reached the
spot we pulled up, but could see no sign of him. A
couple of miles farther on we came upon the little
township of Murdstone, nestling among the foothills
of the Western Tiers. In ordering some refresh-
ment we reported what we had seen.

*0h, that was nothing,' replied the good woman,
as she went on laying the cloth for our entertain-

89

go The Uttermost Star

ment. 'That was Old Father Grab, as the boys call
him, the Miser of Murdstone Creek. He lives in a
hollow tree down the gully, near the stream. He
hates to be seen by anybody. It is a wonder that he
allowed you to catch sight of him. You must have
come quickly round the bend after he had got out
into the open.'

An hour later we had left Murdstone and its miser
a long way behind us, and the matter slipped from
our remembrance. But, somehow, it has rushed
back upon my mind this evening.

The miser is a model for us all. I know, of
course, that it is considered correct to vilify and
malign him. But that is nothing to go by. The
crowd often crucifies those whom it should crown,
and crowns those whom it should crucify. These
things go by fashion. Near a large public school I
saw the other day a group of boys, just released
from their tasks. One of them espied a sparrow sit-
ting on a paling-fence fifty yards away. Instantly
he stooped, seized a stone, and threw it at the bird.
A second boy followed suit. Then another and an-
other, until, before the bird took wing, almost the
entire group was engaged in throwing stones at the
sparrow. In the same way somebody once threw a
stone at the miser. Somebody else followed, and so
on, until now it is considered quite the correct thing
to say the bitterest things that can possibly be said
about this unhappy man.

*I have seen a good deal of misers/ says the Poet

The Miser of Murdstone Creek 91

at the Breakfast-table, *and I think I understand
them as well as most people do.' Indeed, he became
an amateur miser himself. He tells us in another
place that he once kept a little gold by him in order
to ascertain the exact amount of pleasure to be got
out of handling it. And, as a result, his eyes were
opened, and he said hard things about the miser no
more. *I understand now,' he says, 'the delight that
an old ragged wretch, starving himself in a crazy
hovel, takes in stuffing guineas into old stockings
and filling earthen pots with sovereigns, and every
now and then visiting his hoards and fingering the
fat pieces, and thinking over all that they represent
of earthly and angelic and diabolic energy. A miser
pouring out his guineas into his palm, and bathing
his shrivelled and trembling hands in the yellow
heaps before him, is not the prosaic being we are in
the habit of thinking him. He is a dreamer, almost
a poet. Think of the significance of the symbols he
is handling!' Symbols! Symbols of what?

'Symbols of Power, to be sure!' answers Sir
Walter Scott ; for, in The Fair Maid of Perth, Sir
Walter has given us a miser. His name is Henbane
Dwining, the apothecary. Hear him in his own
defence! 'Henbane Dwining,' he says, as he gazes
in delight upon the hoards which he has secretly
amassed, and which he visits whenever the fancy
takes him, 'Henbane Dwining is no silly miser,
doting on pieces for their golden lustre; it is the
power with which they endow the possessor which

92 The uttermost Star

makes him thus adore them.' And he chuckles over
the reflection that the smile of beauty, the dagger
of revenge, the intoxication of pleasure, the con-
trol of fields of fair flowers and forests of rich
game, the favour of courts, the honours of kings,
the pardon of popes, are all, through their virtue,
at his beck and call !

*Yes, symbols, and symbols of Power!' says the
Poet. *The contents of that old glove will buy him
the willing service of many an adroit sinner, and
with what that coarse sack contains he can purchase
the prayers of holy men for all succeeding time. In
this chest is a castle in Spain, a real one, and not
only in Spain, but anywhere he will choose to have
it. All these things, and a thousand more, the miser
hears and sees and feels and hugs and enjoys as he
paddles with his lean hands among the sliding,
shining, ringing, innocent-looking bits of yellow
metal, toying with them as the lion-tamer handles
the great carnivorous monster, whose might and
whose terrors are child's play to the latent forces
and power of harm-doing of the glittering counters
played with in the great game between angels and
devils.' I must apologize for having detained the
Poet so long, but I am most anxious to set the miser
in a pleasant light before the eyes of my reader; and
nothing is more likely to brush away any old preju-
dices that that reader may cherish than the eloquent
testimony I have just quoted.

The miser is guided by a true instinct. It is right

The Miser of Murdstone Creek 93

to hoard. The only mistake that the miser makes,
and it is a mere matter of detail, is that he hoards
the wrong things. He hoards gold, and gold is not
to be despised. But there are things better worth
hoarding even than gold ; and the miser who is really
an adept at the game will quickly find them out. I
have just been reading the biography of Miss Annie
J. Clough, the famous Principal of Newnham Col-
lege, and one of the pioneers of our modern educa-
tional system. It is a beautiful and noble life. But I
was impressed by the insistence with which Miss
Clough urged upon the young ladies under her
charge the importance of storing the mind in youth
with beautiful memories. The average person can,
she insisted, furnish himself with experiences that,
costing neither time nor money, will nevertheless
yield infinite satisfaction when seen in the retrospect
of the years. Miss Clough reminds me of Henry
Ryecroft. Lovers of George Gissing will remem-
ber that when Ryecroft realized, in the days of age
and infirmity, the exquisite pleasure afforded him by
the recollection of youthful strolls in the fir copse, in
the primrosed woods, in the poppy-sprinkled corn-
fields, and in the meadows full of buttercups, he was
filled with remorse at the reflection that he had spent
so much of his time amidst conditions that provided
him with no such pleasing retrospect. I remember
once chatting with a man who had lost his sight in a
colliery explosion. He was telling me that, every
day of his life, there rushes back to mind some little

94 The Uttermost Star

thing that caught his eye in the old days. The
squirrel that he saw in the beech-trees; the daisy-
chain that his sister made as they sat together in
the summer fields; the column of spray that dashed
skywards when the waves broke against the cliffs;
the swallow that he watched as it skimmed the
surface of the millpond and returned with a cap-
tured fly to the nest under the eaves; the bare
branches in the forest bowed down with their heavy
freight of snow; the glow of sunset; the grey of
dawn; the glimmer of twiHght; the merry twinkle of
a boy's eye; the soft crimson of a girl's blush — he
could never express his gratitude that his mind was
stored with thousands of such images.

I have no stones to throw at the miser. I am
sorry for him. The boys at Murdstone called him
'Old Father Grab,' whilst my hostess at the refresh-
ment-rooms called him the 'Miser of Murdstone
Creek.' And, on the whole, her name for him is
more pathetic than their nickname. In his great
chapter 'On the Morality in Words' Archbishop
Trench instances the word 'miser' as a distinguished
example of a word having in its very composition
an attestation of eternal truth. The words 'miser'
and 'misery' come, the Archbishop shows, from
the same root. 'Is it strange, then,' he asks, 'that
men should have agreed to call him a miser, or
miserable, who eagerly scrapes together and pain-
fully hoards the mammon of this world? By calling
such a man a "miser" the moral instinct lying deep

The Miser of Murdstone Creek 95

in all hearts has borne testimony to the tormenting
nature of this vice; to the gnawing pains with which
even in his present time it punishes its votaries;
to the enmity which exists between it and all joy.
The man who enslaves himself to his money is
proclaimed in our very language to be a ''miser"
or miserable man.' Here, therefore, we have one
of those rare cases in which the name is truer and
more expressive than the nickname.

'Old Father Grab!' cried the boys of the town-
ship ; and there was derision and resentment in their
cry.

'The Miser of Murdstone Creek!' said our hostess
at the tea-rooms; and in her more exact description
there was an undertone of tears.

George Eliot, in introducing us to Silas Marner,
the miser of Raveloe, discusses with us, in her
pleasant way, the miser's singular passion. She
thinks that it arises from our human love of com-
pleting sets of things. Let her state her theory in her
own way. 'Have not men, shut up in solitary
confinement, found an interest in marking the
moments by straight strokes of a certain length on
the wall, until the growth of the sum of straight
strokes, arranged in triangles, has become a master-
ing purpose? Do we not wile away moments of
inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some
trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has
bred a want, which is incipient habit? That will
help us to understand how the love of accumulating

96 The Uttermost Star

money grows into an absorbing passion. Marner
wanted the heaps of ten to grow into a square;
and then into a larger square; and every added
guinea, while it was itself a satisfaction, bred a new
desire.' We like to complete a score; and then a
hundred; and then a thousand; and then a million.
Every cricketer knows what I mean. How he loves
to complete a century ! To be bowled at ninety-nine
is an exasperating experience. The difference
between ninety-eight and ninety-nine is a difference
of one; but the difference between ninety-nine and a
hundred is enormous !

I am sorry for the miser, too, because his hoard
does not increase automatically, as it would do if he
entrusted it to a banker. It does not, like old wine,
improve with age. It is at this point that the
memory has the advantage of the miser. When
the miser goes to the old stocking in which he stored
five hundred sovereigns, he finds five hundred
sovereigns there : they are sovereigns still, and there
are just five hundred of them. But when, after a
period of time, you go to the memory, you find what
was once a very little thing; but to what a great
thing has it grown! The buttercups in the fields
of childhood have become part of life's most pre-
cious hoard. Or look at this !

*Good-bye, Steer forth,' said David Copperfield,
as he looked into the face of his friend for the last
time, *good-bye!'

*He was unwilling to let me go,' says David, *and

The Miser of Murdstone Creek 97

stood, holding me, with a hand on each of my
shoulders/

'Good-bye!' he said at last, 'and, Davie, if any-
thing should ever separate us, you must think of
me at my best, old boy. Come! Let us make that
bargain. Think of me at my best, if circumstances
should ever part us.'

They parted; and Davie never saw Steerforth
again till he saw his face upturned in death, tossed
ashore by the waves after the storm and the ship-
wreck.

'Think of me at my besf; it is one of the deepest
of our human cravings. And it is the charm of that
secret hoard that memory treasures that it answers
to that passionate yearning. For our memories are
the most charitable and kindly things about us.
The memory is rarely guilty of harsh judgment or
of slander; she speaks well of almost everything
and everybody. She accentuates the pleasurable-
ness of pleasure, making many things much more
attractive in retrospect than they seemed in reality.
She robs pain of much that is revolting. Like the
ivy that creeps over the crumbling ruin and imparts
a beauty to deformity, the trying and exasperating
things of life are made to appear romantic or
humorous as we tell the story years afterwards.
'Nothing,' says a great American, 'can be so perfect
while we possess it as it will seem when remembered.
The friend we love best may sometimes weary us by
his presence, or vex us by his infirmities. How

98 The Uttermost Star

sweet to think of him as he will be to us after we
have outlived him ten or a dozen years!' Memory
thus contrives to see the most mundane and unallur-
ing objects through a kind of golden haze. The
miser's pence never by any chance turn into
pounds; but in the memory all our geese become
swans.

But most of all am I sorry for the miser because
he is always oppressed by the limitations of his
wealth. He always has one pile that is incomplete ;
and it vexes him. It makes him miserable — a
miser! I could not help thinking of the Miser of
Murdstone Creek yesterday when I was preparing to
preiach on the 'unsearchable riches/ I was struck
by the various translations. Dr. Weymouth speaks
of the 'exhaustless wealth' of Christ; Dr. Moffatt
renders it 'fathomless wealth' ; whilst Dr. Jowett
tells a story. *Once/ he says, *I heard Dr. Rendel
Harris read the chapter in which these words are
found, and he read from his pocket Greek Testa-
ment, and gave his own translation. And I remem-
ber how, when he came to this passage, he threw
out his arms in a wide gesture as he repeated the
words "the unexplorahle wealth of Christ." We had
a suggestion of a vast continent, not yet tracked out,
with roads only here and there.' Now here is a col-
lection !

'Unsearchable riches!' say the Authorized and
Revised Versions, with a thought of the height and
mystery of this invisible treasure.

The Miser of Murdstone Creek 99

'Exhaustless wealth!' says Dr. Weymouth, with
a hint at its everlasting duration.

'Fathomless wealth!' says Dr. Moffatt, with a
suggestion of immeasurable profundities and un-
plumbed depths.

'Unexplorahle wealth!' says Dr. Rendel Harris,
as he thinks of its continental breadths and un-
charted immensities.

Let us hope that some home missionary or bush
evangelist will look in at the hollow tree down the
gully and make the old miser's eyes to sparkle as he
unfolds such astonishing and unsuspected treasure!

X

THE SECRET

A SECRET is a maddening affair. It goads and
stings without discrimination and without pity.
It tortures, Hke a grand inquisitor, both the man who
possesses and the man who covets it. The one is
bursting to tell his secret; the other is burning to
know it. The one is like a bottle filled with highly
effervescent fluid tightly corked; the other is like a
bottle empty and ashamed. But look at this.
They were off to school, side by side, Jessie and
Joan.

*Do tell me !' pleaded Jessie.

*But I promised I would tell nobody,' explained
Joan.

And so, all through the long school-morning,
two little lassies, usually bright as sunshine, bent
over their tasks with faces clouded and glum. The
secret was a kill- joy. It had spoiled all the fun for
both of them.

The worst of it is that secrets are such noisy
things. If a man carries a sovereign in his pocket,
he keeps it dark. Nobody knows it. He does not

lOO

The Secret loi

proclaim it from the housetops for ^he information
of every thieves' kitchen. But with a secret it is
otherwise. A secret is more coveted than a sover-
eign. Yet, by an odd perversity, the man who
carries a secret lets all the world know that he car-
ries it. You can see it in his eyes ; you can detect it
in his behaviour ; you may even hear it from his lips.
He does not, of course, tell you the secret itself; but
he exasperates you by confiding to you the fact that
he holds a secret. That is why it is so much more
easy to pick a man's brains of secrets than to pick
his pockets of sovereigns.

Take Cabinet Ministers, for example. I have
been reading Dasent's great Life of Delane. When
Delane edited The Times, there were no such things
as Cabinet secrets. Delane wouldn't allow them!
The Czar of Russia read the British ultimatum in
The Times before he received the document from
the British ambassador! No decision of any
importance was reached by Her Majesty's advisers
but The Times published it before the responsible
Minister had had time to announce it ! Every new
appointment appeared first in the paper, and was
afterwards communicated to Parliament ! Premiers
stormed ; Ministers thundered ; members made angry
speeches; officials complained bitterly; but still the
conditions knew no change. Lord Derby, in the
Upper House, almost demanded the head of the
offender. Where was the leakage? Who supplied
the information? 'A cask,* remarked Lord Malmes-

I02 The Uttermost Star

bury, *may leak just as easily at the top as at the
bottom,' and conscience-stricken Ministers looked
at each other in amazement or guiltily hung their
heads. The journalists knew all the moves in the
game. The clubs had a story of one noble lord
whose face always assumed a look of extraordinary
importance when a Cabinet secret was tucked away
among the cerebral convolutions of his brain. A
certain reporter, who made it his business to scrutin-
ize his lordship's countenance closely, knew that
look well. He pounced upon his prey like a fox
on a goose.

*Well, my lord,' he would say, quite casually,
*so you have settled such-and-such a matter at last !'

His lordship would look astonished, and con-
cluded that the official announcement must have been
made, or else that some other member of the Cabinet
had been less discreet than himself.

*Yes,' he would reply, *and, since you know so
much, there can be no harm in telling you the rest !'

And so it came about that at daylight the paper
appeared with the whole story !

Now and then it may' happen that a Cabinet
Minister is relieved of a sovereign that he was carry-
ing in his pocket. But that is only now and again,
because sovereigns are so silent. Cabinet Ministers
do not advertise the fact that they carry sovereigns
in their pockets. But every day Cabinet Ministers
are relieved of the secrets that they carry in their
minds. For, unlike the sovereigns, secrets are so

The Secret 103

noisy. The man who carries a secret proclaims to
all the world that he carries that secret. And, as a
natural result, the secret is very soon a secret no
longer.

A secret, as I have said, is a maddening affair. It
teases and tantalizes and taunts me. Be I young
or old, male or female, I am aflame with curiosity
and busy with inquisitive investigations until I know
all about it, and then, in all probability, I laugh at
myself for having bothered my head about such a
stupid or trivial matter. But, meanwhile, the time
has come to pull ourselves up and ask ourselves a
particularly plain and pertinent question. Is a
secret a good thing or a bad thing? Is it a good
thing or a bad thing that, as soon as Jessie discovers
that Joan has a secret, poor little Jessie can think
of nothing else until she has solved the captivating
mystery? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that,
as soon as Fleet Street gets wind of a secret in
Downing Street, an army of journalists, keen as
hounds on the scent, give Cabinet Ministers no rest
night or day until they have run their quarry to
earth? Is it a good thing or a bad thing that, as
soon as I find that my neighbour holds a secret, I
am wretched and ill at ease until I too am in pos-
session of it? It is a good thing; unquestionably
a good thing. I am prepared to argue that the
secrets of the world have been the salvation of the
world.

What is the eternal quest for knowledge but the

104 T^® Uttermost Star

response of our tantalized minds to the taunting
secrets of the universe?

Twinkle, twinkle, little star!
How I wonder what you are 1
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

There was the question — a question asked, in that
form or in some other, by the first inhabitants of
this planet. And the longer that question remained
unanswered, the more restless men became. The
stars; the secrets of the stars; what were the secrets
of the stars? And out of that insatiable hunger
for a secret, astrology and astronomy were born.
Had a secret possessed no power to inflame the
curiosity of men, we should never have had a
Copernicus, a Galileo, a Kepler, a Newton, a Her-
schel. Because the silence of the skies was more
than man could bear, he set to work to wrest their
story from them. The Tower of Babel was the
germ from which the Greenwich Observatory
evolved. And so man came at length to know the
sun and moon, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as Lon-
don knows Melbourne or Melbourne Hong Kong.
The same is true of the strata beneath our feet. The
silence of the past was a terrible thing. What had
happened on this planet before we arrived here —
before our history books began? Here was a secret
for you! And that secret teased the imagination
of man, until he set to work to dig up the records.

The Secret 105

With what frenzy of eager enthusiasm he searched
for that secret! No prospector hunting after gold
at Klondyke or CalgoorHe ever tore up the earth
with fiercer zest. His pickaxe shook the planet.

Beneath the seas he made a stair;
He laid the primal forges bare;

He asked if Truth were hid

'Neath cairn or pyramid;

He questioned rune and kann,

And bones as old as man.

And thus, in that passionate quest of a secret, the
science of geology was born ! And what means all
this romantic tale of exploration — these bronzed
travellers back from the interior of great continents,
these battered ships back from the Poles? It is
the same old story. There were secrets! How
the secret as to the fountains of the Nile taunted the
brain of Livingstone! In the delirium of death he
was still babbling of the fountains, the unseen
fountains. How the secret of the West tantalized
the fancy of Columbus! How the secrets of the
snows have lured to their triumphs a great host of
Arctic and Antarctic adventurers! If science is a
good thing, it follows that a secret is a good thing;
for if the world had been challenged by no secrets,
it would certainly have been enriched by no science.
No man's equipment is complete unless he is
furnished with a fair stock of secrets. The man who
can air all his knowledge to everybody knows

io6 The Uttermost Stax

nothing worth imparting to anybody. A man's
wealth must be measured, not by what he pays away,
but what he still possesses after all his obligations
are discharged. A water-supply must be measured,
not by the flow at the tap, but by the depth and
fullness of the reservoir. And, similarly, a man's
knowledge must be gauged, not by his conversation,
but by his reserves. A wise man knows more than
he ever tells. He may share much of his knowledge
with the multitude; he may divide some of his best
things among his intimates and companions; he
may keep a few of his priceless treasures for the wife
of his bosom; but, even then, he will reserve a few
choice morsels for himself and for himself alone.
Like a gardener who feels that he must himself taste
some of the choicest fruit he grows, like a miser who
runs his fingers through his hoard in secret, the wise
man has a few things that are strictly and solely for
his own delectation.

There is something very impressive about a
dignified reticence. The Scotsman of the true type
never carries his heart on his sleeve. The English
gentleman of the old school is very conservative in
the selection of his friends. It is a bad sign when a
man becomes prodigal of his secrets. When he feels
that he must take everybody into his confidence,
and tell everybody everything, he should instantly
send for a doctor. He is getting morbid. A man
is never so poor as when his stock of secrets has run
low. For the matter of that, it is a bad sign when

The Secret 107

a nation becomes garrulous and talks about every-
thing. There are some subjects that are too sacred
to be exposed to the glare of the footlights. They
do not fit the flicker of a film. They are too majestic
to be bandied to and fro in the course of a newspaper
controversy. Humanity has a few secrets; and,
when humanity is quite healthy and sane, it does not
drag those secrets on to the stage or discuss them in
the press. There is something wrong somewhere
when a people is prepared to talk about everything.
Religion in itself is essentially a matter of secrets.
Emerson, writing of his visit to England, said that
no man could understand England or English his-
tory unless he were in the secret. And the secret of
England, he maintained, was England's faith.
'That divine secret,' he goes on to say, 'has existed
in England from the days of Alfred the Great to
those of Florence Nightingale.' A divine secret,
mark you! That is the mistake that they make
who seek to penetrate the superb silences of revela-
tion. Of the life beyond the grave, for instance, the
Scriptures speak with sublime and awful reticence.
As against this, we have the grotesque history of
seances and table-rappings. 'These records,' says
Mr. Augustine Birrell, until recently one of His
Majesty's advisers, 'these records leave me uncon-
vinced. They lack grandeur. They deal with petty
things. A revelation of a life beyond the grave
ought surely to be more stupendous than that —
something of really first-class importance. Other-

io8 The Uttermost Star

wise we are just as well without it.' Precisely!
Even God is entitled to His secrets. There are
things about which inspiration can afford to be
silent. The fact before which Pompey stood
bewildered when he burst into the Holy of Holies
was the awful stillness of the place. No priest
spake; no choir chanted; the Temple was invaded,
but it held its secrets still. A stately reticence is
infinitely nobler than an ignominious speech.

The soul itself is essentially a secret thing. It
does not advertise itself as the body does. It
loathes the limelight. It dreads publicity. It shrinks
from the glare. The deepest things can never be
told. *He told me all things that ever I did,' said
the woman of Samaria to her fellow townsmen.
That is a masterpiece of Revelation and of Reti-
cence. She did not say what those things were.
She did not glory in her own shame. She revealed
all that it was needful to reveal; she concealed all
that it was womanly to conceal. The man who can
reveal to his fellows the whole of his religious expe-
rience has no experience worth revealing. Faith, to
quote Newman's fine phrase, has large reserves.
The Old Testament likens the growth of the soul to
the growth of a tree. Oliver Wendell Holmes used
to say that a tree is a most wonderful creature stand-
ing on its head. The principal part is underground.
Those marvellous fibres that scent their food and
water from afar, and that accomplish the most
astounding engineering feats in order to reach it, are

The Secret 109

all stowed away in the darkness. What the tree dis-
plays is as nothing to what the tree hides. The New
Testament likens the relationship existing between
the soul and its Saviour to the relationship existing
between a bride and her bridegroom. A proud
young wife may draw aside the veil in order to per-
mit her bosom friends to peep for a moment at her
felicity; but what she reveals is as nothing to what
she conceals. Like the tree, the soul draws her sus-
tenance from darkest depths and hidden springs;
she lives on her secrets. Like the bride, the soul de-
rives her satisfaction from a holy and beautiful rela-
tionship, the mystic character of which no tongue
can ever tell.

XI

MARY GOLDING

I CANNOT think of Mary Golding without feeling
heartily ashamed of myself. Captain Stuart and
Major Mitchell, when they were blazing our great
Australian trails, crossed the districts that were
afterwards riddled with diggings, and never so much
as noticed the gold strewn everywhere about them!
The wheels of their bullock-drays crushed through
the quartz; yet the thought of the precious metal
never once occurred to them. We all go through
life in pretty much the same way. For some years
I must have bustled past the buxom, good-humoured
figure of old Mary Golding twice every day without
dreaming that I was so near to the fringe of a great
romance. It is part of the pathos of this pathetic
old world that we are not introduced to many of the
people best worth knowing until after they have
dropped into their graves. Mary Golding has just
dropped into hers. For sixty years she sold news-
papers every day at the corner of Northumberland
Avenue and Whitehall. Indeed, Mary took over
the pitch from her mother; so that, mother and
daughter, the pair of them had been selling papers on

no

Mary Golding iii

that selfsame spot for the biggest part of a century.
Very few of those whose business now takes them to
Charing Cross will be able to recall the elder lady;
but millions of us must have brushed past Mary
Golding without even noticing her. In all weathers,
we are told, Mary Golding was at her post. Last
December, as she was turning her face towards home
after selling her last paper, she was knocked vio-
lently down by a passing taxi, but she limped back to
her place next morning. The severe winter has,
however, proved too much for her, and the place that
has known her for sixty years will know her no
more. The London papers, with whose circulation
the old lady was so closely identified, noticed her
death, and even expressed regret ; but there is some-
thing about such a career that appeals to the im-
agination. As a mark of respect, and in token of my
sorrow at having passed her so often without even
raising my hat to her, I propose to indulge in a little
speculation.

Like the cloud of sparrows that rises into the air
as you approach a ripening cornfield, a whole host
of questions is started by the thought of Mary
Golding. And to think that I might have asked
those questions and received from her own lips the
answers! But I will ask them still, and the silence
that follows shall be my just rebuke and fitting
retribution. For one would like to know more about
the old newsvender, and especially about the way
in which she regarded her work. There is room for

112 The Uttermost Star

a good deal of psychological conjecture. Did she
look upon it as a mere matter of rote — everlastingly
dealing out papers in return for pennies and half-
pennies? It is conceivable that she may have felt
herself to be almost as mechanical as the penny-in-
the-slot machines. The boys, flying hither and
thither, experience the thrill of rivalry, almost the
excitement of the chase, as they watch with eager
eyes for possible customers, and dart in and out
amidst the traffic in their haste to effect a sale.
But Mary Golding had but to stand still, and she
may have felt that the perpetual handing out of
papers in return for coppers converted her into the
merest piece of mechanism to which humanity can be
reduced. As she stood there day after day she saw
men and women come dancing past her with bright
eyes and flushed faces. She could see that their lives
were all novelty and excitement. But she saw
also hundreds of creatures who came every day at
exactly the same time, who approached every day
at exactly the same pace, who wore every day
exactly the same expression, and who were going
every day to exactly the same tasks.

There was a boy who was on his way to a factory
to stick endless piles of labels on endless rows of
pots. There was a girl who was hurrying to a
restaurant to stand all day behind a curtain washing
up a pile of dirty dishes. There, on the poor girl's
left, stood the greasy plates; and there, on her
right, stood those that she had cleaned. But the

Mary Golding 113

pile on her left never grew any smaller, and the pile
on her right never grew any taller, because the hands
of the waitresses, like the phantom hands of fate,
darted in and out of the curtains, everlastingly add-
ing to the one pile and everlastingly subtracting
from the other. From morning till night she washed
and washed and washed; but the pile of dirty plates
was like the widow's cruse, it never wasted away.
Then there was a woman wnth a hunted look in her
eye, who passed Mary Golding every morning at
precisely eleven minutes past eight. She was on her
way to sew buttons of one unvarying kind on gar-
ments of one unvarying pattern. And then there
was Clark. I feel sure that Clark passed Mary
Golding on his way to the office in Fleet Street.
Mark Rutherford has made us all familiar with
Clark. He was an address-copier. 'The monotony
of that perpetual address-copying was terrible. He
has told me with a kind of shame what an effect
it had upon him, that sometimes for days he would
feed upon the prospect of the most childish trifle
because it would break in some slight degree the
uniformity of his toil. For example, he would
sometimes change from quill to steel pens and back
again, and he found himself actually looking for-
ward with a kind of joy — merely because of the
variation — to the day on which he had fixed to go
back to the quill after using steel.' These people
Mary saw go past her every day like creatures on a
treadmill. And, as she thought of herself, standing

114 7^3 Uttermost Star

at the same spot, doling out everlasting papers in
return for everlasting pennies, it may be that she felt
that she was the most mechanical puppet of them
all.

It may be. But then again, it is at least equally
possible that she caught something of the romance
of the thing. There is a piquant pleasure that only
the gossip knows. The joy of having something to
tell that everybody else is dying to hear is one of
the wildest delights of which some natures are
capable. Did Mary Golding feel, as she handed out
her papers, that that rapture was her perpetual
bliss? She was only a child when, in 1857, she took
her mother's place. The year 1857 was a very
notable one. It was the year of the Indian Mutiny.
London was hungry for the latest news. The girl
may be pardoned if she took a peculiar and personal
pleasure in spreading the thrilling items as soon as
they were available. One of the first papers that
she sold told of the Relief of Lucknow.

Dance to the pibroch! — saved! We are saved! is it you?

Is it you?
Saved by the valour of Havelock, saved by the blessing of

Heaven !
'Hold it for fifteen days I' We have held it for eighty-seven !
And ever aloft on the palace roof the banner of England blew !

Then, again, 1857 was David Livingstone's great
year in England. Did the romance of the African
wilds enter into the soul of Mary Golding that year?
A girl would be unusually apathetic and stolid who

Mary Golding 115

found no delight in handing out papers that told
such tidings to the eager and anxious men as they
passed to and fro. And if, in those early days of her
business, she imbibed such a temper, it is possible
that all the drama of subsequent history wove itself
into her spirit, and she felt herself to be part and
parcel of every stirring movement of which her
papers told. The more I think about it, the more
do I wish that I had noticed and spoken to her in
my old London days. Through her soul the pageant
of empires may have swept. Kings, councils, and
continents may have been the commonplaces of
her thought. Mary Golding may have converted
her newspaper pitch at the street-corner into an
observatory from which she every hour surveyed the
universe.

And, talking of that long stand of hers at the
street-corner, it would be interesting to know
whether, in the course of those sixty years, Mary
ever sighed for a change of scene. Did she not
sometimes fancy that she would like to exchange
pitches with some newsvender at Kensington or
Regent Street? But here, again, there are two
strangely divergent possibilities. It is conceivable,
on the one hand, that, as the years went by, she
grew sick of the thought of Northumberland House,
and only trudged back to the old spot, in sunshine
or in snow, in summer and in winter, under the
remorseless pressure of a cruel necessity. Could
anything be more wearisomely monotonous than to

ii6 The Uttermost Star

spend one's whole day, from dawn to dark, year in
and year out, without hohday or reHef, at the same
spot for sixty long years? And yet, on the other
hand, it is at least equally possible that, with the
years, she fell in love with the place, and felt that
she could not live without it. We grow to things,
like the ivy to the wall. Richard Jefferies was once
asked why he walked the same road every day.
The question startled him, and he could not imme-
diately answer it. It had never occurred to him
that he had adhered so closely to the same path.
*Not till years afterwards,' he says, Vas I able to
see why I went the same round and why I did not
care for change. I do not want change; I want the
same old and loved things. I want the same wild
flowers, the same trees, the same soft ash-green!
I want the same turtle-doves, the same blackbirds,
the same coloured yellowhammer, singing, so long as
there is light enough to cast a shadow on the dial,
the same old song! And I want them all in the
same places! Let me see the idle shadows resting
on the white dust; let me hear the humble-bees,
and stay to look down on the dandelion disc; let
me see the chaffinch with a feather in her bill!
No change for me ! Let me see the same things on
the same road, keeping the same succession year by
year !'

I recognize, in quoting Richard Jefferies, that
there is a vast difference between a Sussex lane and
a London street-corner. But it is just as possible

Mary Golding 117

to lose one's heart to a city pavement as to a country
pasture. We get fond of things, not because of
their intrinsic beauty, but because of our very
famiharity with them. They become part of us,
and we of them. What about Tim Linkinwater?
'It's forty-four year,' said poor Tim, when it was
proposed to give him some reHef from his regular
duties, 'it's forty-four year next May since I first
kept the books of Cherryble Brothers. I've opened
the safe every morning all that time as the clock
struck nine, and gone over the house every night at
half -past ten to see the doors fastened and the fires
out. I've never slept out of the back attic one
single night. There's the same mignonette box in
the middle of the window, and the same four flower-
pots, two on each side, that I brought with me when
I first came. There ain't — I've said it again and
again, and I'll maintain it — there ain't such a square
as this in the world; not one. For business or
pleasure, in summer-time or winter — I don't care
which — there's nothing like it. There's not such a
spring in England as the pump under the archway.
There's not such a view in England as the view out
of my window; I've seen it every morning before I
shaved, and I ought to know something about it.
I have slept in that room for forty-four year, and if
it wasn't inconvenient and didn't interfere with
business, I should request leave to die there!'
Dickens knew, when he drew Tim Linkinwater, that
he was painting from life. I like to fancy that

ii8 The Uttermost Star

Mary Golding entertained the same agreeable senti-
ments concerning the street-corner at which so much
of her Hfe was passed.

Moreover, Mary Golding had one immense advan-
tage over Tim Linkinwater, inasmuch as the per-
sonal element entered more largely into her life. A
street-corner is alive with personal interest. There
are the people who come past every day, and who
come past at exactly the same time. There are the
people who come frequently, but whose coming is
irregular and erratic. And there are the strangers.
Mary Golding would probably only welcome the
members of this latter class as imparting a tinge of
variety and novelty to her ordinary outlook. Her
delight would be in the regular comers. A man
would pass her four times a day for twenty years
without exchanging a word, yet if, on any one occa-
sion, he were ten minutes late, the circumstance
would awaken her interest; and, if he absented him-
self altogether, she would await the next day with
impatience and concern. She may have fancied, and
with some justice, that this silent interest was re-
ciprocal. In her time she regularly sold her papers
to Lord Salisbury, to Lord Hartington, to Mr. John
Burns, and to Mr. Gladstone. If ever a heavy cold
or a twinge of rheumatism suggested the advisabil-
ity of a day at home, it is quite on the cards that the
good woman flattered herself that, were she to yield
to such a temptation, Mr. Gladstone would be
wondering what had become of her. Life has an

Mary Golding 119

amiable habit of flattering us in this particular, and
of wedding us to our work. However modest our
duties may be, we get into the way, after a number
of years, of fancying that things could not go on
without us. Mary Golding may quite easily have
schooled herself into believing that Northumberland
House would have to close its doors unless she stood
just outside the gate with her papers. No item
of news upon her placards, she would fancy, could
be quite so astounding and sensational as her own
disappearance from the familiar spot.

It is by whispering such things into our ears that
life binds us to our allotted tasks, and renders at-
tractive to us duties that, to an outsider, might seem
repugnant and intolerable. Sour-visaged philos-
ophers may tell us if they will that no man is indis-
pensable; but, as a matter of actual fact, we all meet
life every morning with a smile and a song because
in our hearts we believe that the world could not
get on without us. Something whispers it to us,
and, in spite of the philosophers, we all believe it;
and, because we all believe it, the work of the world
gets done.

PART II

DRIFTING APART

We were sitting on the cliffs at Beechington, read-
ing. At least, we were coquetting with our books,
for one's attention is always divided, under such con-
ditions, between the volume on his knee and the
broad expanse of blue water that stretches out
before him. In the distance we could see the heads.
All at once a fine steamer crept out from between the
great rugged promontories, and put out to sea. To
our surprise, it was followed almost immediately by
another. It may have been owing to the light and
atmospheric conditions, but, from where we sat, the
two ships looked as much alike as two peas in a pod.
Indeed, one could almost imagine that he was gazing
upon a mirage, and that the one was really but a
reflection of the other. One behind the other, the
two vessels crept along the skyline as though the
one had the other in tow. Then came the change.
One swerved slightly to port, and the other slightly
to starboard. We turned once more to our books.
And when we looked up again, the alteration was
almost incredible. The one ship, having come
nearer, looked immensely larger; the other was a

123

124 Tho uttermost Stax

mere speck on the horizon. The one was still in
the sunshine; the other was shaded by a passing
cloud. The two appeared to have nothing in com-
mon. It seemed impossible that, half an hour ago,
they had been so near together and looked so much
alike. Here, surely, was an allegory. I was gazing
at a picture of the things that drift apart.

I thought of Abraham and Lot. Abraham and
Lot journeyed together all the way from the Persian
Gulf to Palestine; from Palestine to the Pyramids;
and were on their way to Palestine again. Then
they drifted apart. 'There was strife between the
herdmen of Abraham's cattle and the herdmen of
Lot's cattle. And Abraham, said unto Lot, Let there
be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and
between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we are
brethren. Is not the whole land before thee? Sep-
arate thyself, I pray thee, from me. If thou wilt
take the left hand, I will go to the right; and if thou
wilt take the right hand, I will go to the left. And
Lot chose him all the Plain of Jordan; and Lot jour-
neyed east: and they separated themselves the one
from the other.' Anybody who afterwards saw
Abraham with his tent pitched, and his altar built, on
the plains of Mamre, and Lot with his tent pitched
towards Sodom, and with no altar at all, would
never have dreamed that, once upon a time, they

Drifting Apart 125

journeyed so closely together and seemed so much
alike. I thought of this story, I say, as I watched
the two ships from the cliffs at Beechington.

II

There is an essential difference between two and a
pair, A sovereign and a sixpenny-bit are two, the
fox and the goose are two, the hare and the tortoise
are two ; you cannot arrange these in pairs. Chris-
tian and Pliable are two; they go side by side, but
all eternity lies between them. Christian and
Faithful, on the other hand, are a pair; they may
be torn from each other's embrace, but all eternity
cannot really separate them. John and Judas are
two; David and Jonathan are a pair. Proximity
is no indication of affinity. More than a century
ago two men voyaged together round the coast of
Scotland. Anybody looking at them from the
shore would have supposed that they were a pair.
They were nothing of the kind; they were two.
One was Robert Stevenson, Engineer to the Board
of Northern Lighthouses; the other was Sir Walter
Scott. But, although they share the same boat,
they have scarcely anything in common. Scott
loves the fair weather; Stevenson the foul. Scott
likes to get ashore, wander up over the hills, inspect
some crumbling old ruin, get among the gossips of
the countryside and gather up those quaint old
legends and stirring traditions that he will after-

126 The Uttermost Star

wards weave into his great romances. Stevenson, on
the other hand, is thinking, not of the past, but of
the future. His eye is not on castles that have been,
but on Hghthouses yet to be. He loves to see the
ocean in a fury, so that he may detect the points of
real peril. He spends his time in taking soundings,
climbing about on the precipitous rocks and jagged
reefs, and getting drenched to the skin in the boiling
surf. He is only concerned with the discovery of
suitable sites for his lighthouses. They are not a
pair; they are two. A pair is a single entity; its
constituents are indivisible. But two are two;
two separate entities, thrown together only to drift
apart again. If they are a pair, all the oceans of the
world may roll between them; they are united still.
But if, as in the case of Abraham and Lot, Christian
and Pliable, Judas and John, Stevenson and Scott,
they are two, there is no union. It is mere prox-
imity. You may bind men together by the most
awful deeds and instruments that the law can devise;
you may commit them to each other by the most
solemn oaths and covenants ; you may bring to bear
upon them the most sacred rites and ceremonies;
but it is all futile. They are not mated. Proximity
is not affinity. They are still two; they are not a
pair.

Ill

No one who has once experienced the torture of
physical separation— rthe separation effected by

Drifting Apart 127

mere distance — would say a word to belittle its
inexpressible anguish. You have only to stand
upon the platform when the boat-train leaves, or
to take your place upon the wharf when the great
ship is swinging out to sea, in order to witness one of
the most poignant and passionate manifestations of
human sorrow. And those who, so far from being
onlookers, have actually experienced that terrible
ordeal, know that it is the concentration of heart-
break and the climax of mortal agony. As the
fluttering handkerchiefs become small as snowflakes
and then vanish altogether; as the fond familiar
faces become less and less distinguishable until at
last they are lost in the crowd; as the horrid chasm
slowly widens between the vessel and the quay, the
soul feels itself to have been caught in the pitiless
grip of heartless forces that are crushing the very
life-blood out of it. At the moment it is even more
painful than death. Death comes so gently and so
naturally, and, for a moment or two, the dead still
seem so near, that it takes a while to realize that the
fond ties have been finally and irrevocably snapped.
But this other wrench is so unnatural and so violent.
The bitterness of death does not reach its culmina-
tion in the act and article of death. But this grief
reaches its climax all in a moment; and during that
moment, the soul writhes in torture indescribable.
And yet, knowing this and having experienced it,
I say deliberately that, of all forms of separation,
this form is in reality the least intolerable.

128 The Uttermost Star

IV

At this point Alfred Tennyson becomes our best
and wisest teacher. 'In Memoriam' is the classic
of two great souls whose history resembled the
history of my two steamers. For a while they
journeyed together and were twin. Then their
ways suddenly diverged. Hallam was called to the
higher service. Tennyson found himself continuing
on the old course. And, contemplating the separa-
tion, the poet lets his fancy play about the various
kinds of separation by which one soul may be torn
from another. There is, for example, the social
cleavage. Here are two ploughboys working
together on the farm. They labour side by side, and
are as much alike as my two steamers. But one is
content to be a ploughboy; the other is fired by a
great ambition. Tennyson describes this second
youth as one

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And breasts the blows of circumstance,

And grapples with his evil star;

Who makes by force his merit known,
And lives to clutch the golden keys.
To mould a mighty state's decrees,

And shape the whisper of the throne;

And moving up from higher to higher
Becomes, on Fortune's crowning slope,
The pillar of a people's hope.

The centre of a world's desire.

Drifting Apart 129

But what about the other ploughboy, that *earHest
mate' with whom he trudged side by side along the
rutted country lanes in the days of auld lang syne?
He

. . . ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labour of his hands,
Or in the furrow musing stands ;

'Does my old friend remember me?'

Tennyson gazes upon this picture that his fancy has
conjured up — the picture of the ploughman and the
Prime Minister; and he compares the separation
thus effected with the separation that has snatched
his old friend Hallam from his side. Is Hallam like
the Prime Minister, moving now along some more
exalted plane? And is he himself like the plough-
man, leaning on the handles of his plough, and
wondering if sometimes his old friend thinks fondly
of him still? Here, then, is the social cleavage.
It is trying enough ; but it is not the worst.

V

For, almost instantly, another picture flashes upon
the white screen of the poet's fancy. A bride and
bridegroom !

These two — they dwelt with eye on eye!
Their hearts of old have beat in tune,
Their meetings made December June,

Their every parting was to die !

Then he devotes himself to study; he must needs

I30 The Uttermost Star

excel. He sits apart, lost in his researches. He
seems to slight her simple heart.

He thrids the labyrinth of the mind,
He reads the secret of the star.
He seems so near and yet so far.

He looks so cold ; she thinks him kind.

She keeps the gift of years before,

A withered violet is her bliss;

She knows not what his greatness is.
For that, for all, she loves him more.

For him she plays, to him she sings
Of early faith and plighted vows;
She knows but matters of the house.

And he, he knows a thousand things.

Her faith is fixt and cannot move,
She darkly feels him great and wise,
She dwells on him with faithful eyes,

*I cannot understand : I love.'

And again Tennyson thinks of his old friend. Is
Hallam like the studious bridegroom? Has he lost
himself in diviner contemplations and gradually-
grown away from the sweet old simplicities of long
ago? And is he himself like the lonely wife, gazing
on her learned husband, clinging still but failing to
understand ?

VI

The social cleavage is bad, and the intellectual
cleavage is worse, but there is something still more
terrible. What about Abraham and Lot ? What

Drifting Apart 131

about Judas and John? Is not the climax of
tragedy reached when two friends walk familiarly
together, seek every day each other's society, and,
perhaps, go up to the house of God in company.

And then; and then ! One, like Abraham,

becomes every day a little finer, a little nobler, a
little more considerate, a little more courteous, a
little more unselfish ; whilst the other becomes every
day a little more self-centred, a little less chivalrous,
a little less thoughtful, a little more coarse, a little
more materialistic, a little more sensual, until, at
last, like my two steamers, nobody would ever
suspect that they once journeyed so familiarly
together and seemed so much alike.

Here, then, you have these five forms of human
separation; these five ways in which our human
partnerships may to all outward appearances be
dissolved; these five methods of drifting apart.

1. There is the cleavage effected by Distance —
the parting on the railway platform; the farewell at
the wharf.

2. There is the cleavage effected by Death —
Arthur Hallam and Alfred Tennyson.

3. There is the Social cleavage — the ploughboy
who becomes Prime Minister, and the ploughboy
who remains at his lonely furrow.

4. There is the Intellectual cleavage — the simple
housewife and her studious husband.

5. There is the Moral cleavage — Abraham and
Lot; John and Judas.

132 The Uttermost Star

These five; and although I have said that, of
them all, the parting on the pier is the most bitter at
the moment, yet those who are called to return with
swollen eyes to their saddened homes may there fall
upon their knees and give humble and hearty thanks
to heaven that to them has been meted out this form
of separation — this and no other.

VII

Poor old Uncle Tom had been done almost to
death by Simon Legree, the vicious slave-dealer.
He lay in the shed, dying, his back all torn and
lacerated by the cruel lashes. All through the night
there stole stealthily to his side the other slaves on
the plantation, poor creatures who crept in to see
the last of him, to bathe his wounds, to ask his
pardon, or to kneel in prayer beside his tortured
frame. With the morning light came George
Shelby, his old master, to redeem him.

*Is it possible, is it possible ?' he exclaimed, kneel-
ing down by the old slave. 'Uncle Tom, my poor,
poor old friend !'

But Uncle Tom was too far gone. He only mur-
mured faintly to himself:

'Jesus can make a dying bed
Feel soft as downy pillows are.*

*You shan't die; you mustn't die, nor think of
it! I've come to buy you and take you home!'
cried George, with impetuous vehemence.

Drifting Apart 133

*Oh, Mas'r George, ye're too late. The Lord's
bought me and is going to take me home — and I long
to go. Heaven is better than old Kentuck !'

At this moment the sudden flush of strength
which the joy of meeting his young master had
infused into the dying man gave way. A sudden
sinking fell upon him; he closed his eyes; and that
mysterious and sublime change passed over his face
that told the approach of other worlds. He began
to draw his breath with long, deep inspirations;
and his broad chest rose and fell heavily. The
expression of his face was that of a conqueror.

'Who,' he whispered, 'who — who — who shall
separate us from the love of Christ f and fell asleep.

All the five forms of cleavage that I have tabu-
lated had done their worst for Uncle Tom. He had
been torn away from the old Kentucky home;
snatched from the arms of old Aunt Chloe; sold
away from children and kindred : separated from
everything that he counted precious. And yet, and
yet there was One heart from which nothing could
separate him, One love from which he could never,
never drift.

II

THE WILL-O'-THE-WISP

Oh, the Will-o'-the-Wisp ! the Will-o'-the-Wisp I
What tales we have heard of the Will-o'-the-Wisp!
Hovering over the reedy mere; dancing across the
misty marshes; fluttering round the dank lagoon;
flickering over the spongy moorlands; who has not
met with the Will-o'-the-Wisp? Child of the bog
and the swamp and the fen, haunting on foggy
autumn nights the soft morass and the slimy quag-
mire, he is known by a score of expressive and
sinister aliases; but we are not confused by the
multitude of his ugly names. Whether the country
people call him Old Spunkee, or speak with terror
of Jack-o'-Lantern, we recognize under each such
fearsome title or description the familiar features
of Will-o'-the-Wisp. How the flesh creeps as we
read, in the quaint pages of Ben Jonson and Robert
Burton, of John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont,
their hair-raising stories of Will-o'-the-Wisp! In
the first book I ever read I made the acquaintance of
Will-o'-the-Wisp. It was Mary Godolphin's Sand-
ford and Merton — a special edition prepared in
words of one syllable. I have it still, and a record on

134

The Will-o'-the-Wisp 135

the fly-leaf shows that I read it first when I was in
my sixth year. But I remember the tense excite-
ment with which I followed the adventures of Hal
Sandford on that night in which he was lost on the
lonely moor. In front of him he saw a dim and
fitful light which he took to be a lantern carried by
some more fortunate traveller. The light zigzags
to and fro; and Hal concludes that his fellow
traveller is drunk. But, drunk or sober, he longs to
reach him and enjoy some kind of human compan-
ionship. He presses on until he finds himself becom-
ing entangled in the marshes, and at last falls head-
long into a slimy pit.

'But, Hal,' says Tom Merton, as he listens to the
story afterwards, 'did you find out what that light
was that you saw in the marsh ?'

'Yes,' said Hal; 'it was the Will-o'-the-Wisp!'

Thus, as old John Gay sings,

Will-o'-the-Wisp misleads nightfaring clowns
O'er hills and sinking bogs.

It may be with Will-o'-the-Wisp, as with most of
us, that he is not so black as he is painted. It is pos-
sible that his elfish tricks have been exaggerated by
those who have placed his antics and vagaries on
record. Perhaps he is not so fond of damp old
churchyards and places of execution as some of the
novelists would have us to believe. But he is a mis-
chievous little sprite for all that. Just listen to his
song:

136 The Uttermost Star

When night's dark mantle covers all,

I come in fire arrayed,
Many a victim I've seen fall,

Or fly from me dismayed.

Many a traveller I deceive,
And with their parting breath

I hear them call in vain for help,
And dance round them in death.

*Will-o'-the-Wisp I' they trembling cry ;

'Will-o'-the-Wisp 1 'tis he!'
To mark their fright as off they fly

Is merry sport to me I

I dance I I dance 1 I'm here 1 I'm there !
Who tries to catch me catches but air 1
The mortal who follows me follows in vain,

For I laugh, ha, ha!

I laugh, ho, ho !
I laugh at their folly and pain,

I laugh at their folly and pain 1

II

I do not propose, in these fugitive paragraphs of
mine, to attempt to reduce the subject to the terms
of precise definition and exact treatment. Others
have ventured upon that task, and, according to his
wont, Will-o'-the-Wisp has invariably eluded them.
Friedrich List, the German philosopher, came upon
Will-o'-the-Wisp one night on the edge of a swamp,
and held his hand in the luminous glow, yet felt no
warmth. Knorr also came upon the sprite, and
persuaded him to stand so still near the fringe of a

The Will-o'-the-Wisp 137

marsh that he was able for a quarter of an hour to
touch him by extending his walking-stick as far as
he could reach over the water's edge. Yet when,
at the end of that time, the light suddenly flitted
away, and Knorr felt the ferrule that had been so
long in the flame, it was as cold as though no fire
had ever touched it. A weird, uncanny little elf
is this Will-o'-the-Wisp of ours!

Ill

But Will-o'-the-Wisp does not stand alone. As
I have wandered about the solar system, poking my
stick into every ant-heap and rabbit-hole that I
have come across, I have hit upon quite a number of
things just as elusive and just as strange. There
are lights that appear when they are most needed;
lights that seem to be specially designed for the
guidance of those who see them; and yet lights that
will lure to his destruction the benighted creature
who dares to follow them. Take Instinct, for
example. Sometimes, as though to beget in us a
fatal confidence in its infallibihty, it leads with the
most amazing accuracy along a hideously perilous
and intricate path. See with what skill it guides
the mason-bee! This odd little creature builds her
miniature palace out of the mud. When the tiny
chambers are dry and ready for occupation, she
hunts for spiders. Having caught a spider, she
bites him in such a way as not to kill, but to paralyse

138 The Uttermost Star

him. Then laying her eggs upon his back, she
deposits him in one of the cells which she has con-
structed; and so on until all the cells are full. She
thus secures for her offspring, in the paralysed
spiders, a plentiful supply of fresh food with which
to nourish their earliest infancy. Here the quality
that we commonly call Instinct seems to have al-
most reached perfection, and it would be interesting
to be able to trace the age-long history of adventure,
experiment, and disappointment by which so elabor-
ate a system has been built up and perfected.
Surely the kindly light that leads the mason-bee so
shrewdly can be safely trusted by everything and
everybody !

And yet, and yet! Travellers on the Amazon
have frequently commented upon the fate that over-
takes vast numbers of boa-constrictors when the
river is swollen with its winter floods. Instinct
teaches these huge reptiles, in the autumn, to take
a full meal and coil themselves up for their long
sleep. But, strangely enough. Instinct does not
teach them where to hibernate. As a consequence,
great numbers of them coil themselves up below
high-water-mark, with the result that, when the
rains come and the river rises, they are swept away
by the swirling waters. Instinct tells them what to
do and when to do it ; but it does not tell them where
to do it, and for the want of this essential item of
information they miserably perish. Or pass from
the insects and the reptiles to the animals. Let us

The Will-o'-the-Wisp 139

take the case of the lemmings. *Every now and
then/ says a traveller who has seen this strange phe-
nomenon in Norway, 'every now and then, all the
lemmings in a district congregate in a great army,
as if some Fiery Cross summons has been sent
round, and move in a bee-line for the sea. Over
mountains, through forests, across foaming torrents
they make their impetuous way. Many are lost,
many drop, many starve; but on and on the army
marches for the sea. And when they reach the sea,
all plunge in and are drowned! What perverted in-
stinct can account for this?' In this case it would
almost seem as if Instinct had not merely forgotten,
as in the case of the boa-constrictor, to tell the crea-
tures something that they need to know, but had
deliberately set herself to lure them to their doom.
Is not this a Will-o'-the-Wisp?

One of the novelists to whom I have referred tells
of a peculiarly grim adventure. His hero, hopelessly
lost in a lonely and unfamiliar district, sees all at
once two lights. One, a long way off, appears to
be passing through a clump of trees. Its bearer
is apparently on the fringe of a forest. The traveller
shrinks from the thought of entering the gloomy
woods at dead of night, and turns wistfully towards
the other gleam. It is nearer; it advances slowly,
though with irregular and jaunty movements, across
the level country. He decides to follow it, and is
soon up to his waist in the swamp. As it turned out,
the distant light was the lantern of the men who

I40 The Uttermost Star

were searching for him; he had been ensnared by
the glow of the Will-o'-the Wisp ! Now something
very Hke this is happening every day. There are
well-known cases of conflicting instincts, or of an
instinct that speaks simultaneously with two con-
tradictory voices. Darwin, in his Descent of Man,
gives several instances of this peculiarity. The
most curious, in his judgment, is the occasional
conquest of the maternal instinct by the migratory
instinct. The maternal instinct is one of the most
powerful emotions known to naturalists. It will
lead the most feeble, the most timid, and the most
shrinking creatures to face the greatest dangers in
direct opposition to the law of self-preservation.
But the migratory instinct is also amazingly strong.
*A confined bird will at the proper season beat her
breast against the wires of her cage until it is bare
and bloody. The migratory instinct causes young
salmon to leap out of fresh water, in which they
could continue to exist, and thus unintentionally to
commit suicide.' And it sometimes happens that
these two instincts, the maternal and the migratory,
appeal to the same bird at the same time. Thus, late
in the autumn, swallows, house-martins, and swifts
frequently desert the tender young in their nests.
Darwin thought that, when the bird is near her
nestlings, the maternal instinct is probably the
stronger; but when, out of sight of the nest, she
comes upon thousands of other swallows congregat-
ing for their overseas flight, the migratory instinct

The Will-o' -the- Wisp 141

assumes the ascendant. 'When arrived at the end
of her long journey, and the migratory instinct has
ceased to act, what an agony of remorse the bird
must feel, if, from being endowed with great mental
activity, she cannot prevent the image constantly
passing before her mind of her young ones perishing
through cold and hunger on a bleak and distant
shore!' Is not this the very experience that the
novelist describes?

IV

Is Reason much better — or even Conscience?
Reason is a most marvellous faculty. And yet,
in the straits of the soul, it is a most erratic guide.
Two statesmen, equally able and equally con-
scientious, survey the same facts; reach diametri-
cally opposite conclusions; and become the leaders
of hostile parties. Two scientists, equally discerning
and equally experienced, examine the same phe-
nomena, and build up theories utterly antagonistic
the one to the other. Two judges, equally learned
and equally just, hear the same w^itnesses tell the
same stories; they convince the one judge that
truth is with the prosecutor, whilst the other is no
less certain that it is with the defendant. If I trust
so treacherous a guide too implicitly, may I not find
myself floundering in the bog?

Conscience, too, is wonderful, almost divine.
And yet, as has often been pointed out, 'when the
Lacedaemonians whipped boys to death as an

142 The Uttermost Star

offering to Diana; when the mother of Xerxes, as
he departed on one of his expeditions, buried aHve
a number of youths to propitiate the subterranean
powers; when the Carthaginians placed their little
children on the red-hot lap of Moloch,' they were
following Conscience and making terrible sacrifices
for her dear sake. The men who burned the
martyrs were often as conscientious as the martyrs
whom they burned. When, on the first of July,
141 6, John Huss was bound to the stake, a poor old
peasant woman came to the place of execution
bringing with her a faggot. She begged that it
might be added to the pile round the stake. But
when it was flung on, she was not content. It
must, she said, be close up to the victim, so that it
might help to consume him.

*Have I ever harmed you or yours/ asked Huss,
*that you are so bitter against me ?'

'Never/ was the reply; *but you are a heretic.
Wood is scarce this year, and the winter, they say,
is like to be a hard one. I can ill afford the faggot,
but I would fain do God service by helping to rid
the earth of an accursed heretic; and therefore I
make the sacrifice.'

'O holy simplicity!' exclaimed the martyr. And,
reaching out his hand, he drew the faggot toward
him, and placed it against his side. Terhaps,' he
said, 'the faggot may be a means of grace to both
of usT

*Give your body to be burned!' said Conscience

The Will-o ' -the-Wisp 1 43

to John Huss. 'Give your faggot to burn him!'
said Conscience to the peasant woman.
Is not this the Will-o'-the-Wisp ?

V

Then spake Jesus unto them, saying: *I am the
Light of the World: he that followeth Me
shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
THE Light of Life/ And with that golden word
of clear guidance ringing in our ears we say good-
bye for ever to the Will-o'-the-Wisp.

Ill

THE DOCTOR'S CONVERSION

I WISH I could introduce the old doctor in some more
human fashion. Pen and ink are all very well in
their way, but their way is not the best way. And
no way but the best way is worthy of the doctor.
You need to see him, to hear his voice, to feel his
handclasp, and to breathe the atmosphere that is
generated by his presence. I can never hope,
through this lame medium, to give any impression
of his bulky, though not ungainly, form; his
venerable countenance; his silvery hair; his
sparkHng eyes; his deep, rich, musical voice. It
is worth a mile's walk on a wet day just to hear him
laugh. An evening with the doctor is one of the
luxuries of Hfe.

As everybody knows. Doctor John Horner is the
beloved and honoured minister of the church at
Willoughby Street. He lives in the old stone, ivy-
covered house behind the church, and the gloomy
walk under the chestnut-trees to his door has been
well worn by a constant stream of eager visitors.

144

The Doctor's Conversion 145

Young people have walked along this shady path
at the very summit of their felicity; and older folk
have sometimes carried along it hearts as heavy as
lead. For the doctor has been here now for over
thirty years. He has watched the members of the
Willoughby Street congregation grow up from
childhood. Mr. Edward Westbrook, the secretary
of the church, and his wife, are both of them con-
scious of silver in their hair. But the doctor likes
to remind them of a certain Sunday, in the early
days of their courtship, when they sat together in
church for the first time. The doctor has shared
with them all the joys and sorrows of their happy
wedded life. When each of the children was but a
few days old, he stood reverently by the bedside and
breathed upon mother and babe his benediction.
When, fifteen years ago, Lily, the only daughter, a
fair but frail girl, drooped and died, he, by his very
presence, radiated comfort and courage in the
stricken home. When business affairs are not going
just to Mr. Westbrook's liking, he always says that a
chat with the doctor is as bracing as a tonic or a
holiday. *I always go back to the office whistling
next morning,' he says, when he tells you about it.
And when things at home are causing headache or
heartache, it is to the doctor that Mrs. Westbrook
always carries her worries. 'Somehow or other,'
she says, *he always seems to understand. He
listens to all that I say, and talks it over with me
afterwards just as if the affairs we are discussing

146 The Uttermost Star

were his own. I have often seen his eyes moisten
when we have been in trouble. But by the time that
he has talked with me and prayed with me, I always
feel that the worst is over, and that everything will
be sure to come right after all.' Any of the scores
of men and women whom you may see sitting with
their young people in the stately old pews at Wil-
loughby Street would speak of the doctor in exactly
the same way. It is always a congenial topic of
conversation. In every allusion that they make to
him there is a singular mingling of reverence and
endearment. The doctor has made himself the
father of all his people; and, in the process, he has
converted his pulpit into a throne.

II

For years after I met first the doctor I took it for
granted that he had always been of the temper that
we all so greatly honoured and so much admired.
But one evening I made a discovery that quite
astounded me. I had undertaken to preach some
special sermons at Whitlington, and was met at the
railway station by the minister of the church.
After a cheerful tea and a short stroll, we settled
down to an evening by the fireside. My hostess
and her daughter busied themselves with their
knitting; the minister and I just talked. I learned
with surprise that he and the doctor were at college
together. Instantly the current of our conversation

The Doctor's Conversion 147

set steadily along that channel. The theme was
of mutual interest,- and seemed almost inexhaustible.
All at once I made my discovery.

*Yes,' remarked my host, leaning back in his chair
meditatively, *I have never seen a greater change
overtake the minister than the change that came over
John Horner after he went to Willoughby Street/

*Indeed,' I replied, *and in what way?'

*Oh, when next you see him, you must ask him
to tell you the story of his conversion, as he calls it.
As I told you, we were in college together; and we
settled at about the same time in towns not far
apart — he at Oakhampton and I at Trow ford.
John was eight years at Oakhampton before he was
called to Willoughby Street ; and he was in hot water
all the time !'

Tn hot water !' I exclaimed in astonishment.

*In those days,' my host continued, 'John Horner
was the greatest controversialist in our part of the
country. He was always pitching into somebody.
Once or twice a week, when you picked up the
paper, you could rely upon finding a letter signed
**John Horner" protesting against some local
proposal or exposing the fallacy of somebody's
argument. In almost every sermon he launched
some violent attack or brought some scathing
indictment. In such wordy warfare he was a most
skilful swordsman. He knew how to thrust and how
to parry. He was continually debating, contending,
disputing; he was never happy unless some fierce

148 The Uttermost Star

storm of controversy was raging around him.
Whenever he came to see me, he would rub his hands
and ask, with eyes sparkling, and all his body in a
ferment of excitement, whether I had seen his letter
in the Courier. ''I've left him," he would exclaim,
"without a leg to stand on; he'll never dare to
reply!" To the religious papers, also, John sent
his terrible philippics. He was the heart and soul
of many a heated disputation; people knew, as soon
as they saw his signature at the foot of a communica-
tion, that things were likely to be lively; and editors
welcomed his contributions for the sake of the
simmer of excitement that they imparted to columns
that were too often unconscionably dull. John
gloried in a fight. I told him once that he reminded
me of George Macdonald's "Waesome Carl."

There cam a man to oor toon-en',
And a waesome carl was he,

Muckle he spied, and muckle he spak,

But the owercome o' his sang,
Whatever it said, was aye the same : —

There's nane o' ye but's a' wrangl
Ye're a* wrang, and a' wrang.
And a'thegither a' wrang;
There's no a man aboot the toon
But's a'thegither a' wrang.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I
could see that John resented them. But he was on
his defence in a moment. His eyes flashed. True
religion, he exclaimed, is virile, militant, aggressive.

The Doctor's Conversion 149

The whole spirit of apostolic evangelism, he main-
tained, was in the nature of a tremendous and sus-
tained contention. Most of us, he declared, are too
mealy-mouthed. Then, warming to his subject, he
crushed me beneath a perfect avalanche of argu-
ment. He overwhelmed me with an impressive
pageant of ponderous authorities. I cowered before
the fusillade and cannonade to which he pitilessly
subjected me. Most heartily did I regret having
had the temerity, on even a minor point, to differ
from him. In those days John kept the whole town
in a ferment. But you must ask him, when you go
back, to tell you all about it. Say I told you to.'

Ill

The opportunity came more quickly than I could
have expected. A few days later I was strolling
through the park. I crossed the lawns and made my
way down to the lake; and standing at the water's
edge, watching the children feeding the swans, I
saw the doctor himself. He greeted me warmly,
and led me to a seat under a giant elm, and we sat
there enjoying the glorious expanse of green grass,
noble forestry, and shimmering water that, like a
panorama, spread itself out before us. My oppor-
tunity was not long in coming. He asked me about
my visit to Whitlington. Had I seen his old friend
there? And how were things going with him? I
told him of the services, of the affairs of the Whit-

I50 The Uttermost Star

lington household, and then of the talk beside the
fire. As soon as I had mentioned it, I saw that I had
unwittingly revived an unpleasant memory. A
cloud passed over his face, and he sat in silence, ap-
parently looking at the swans. Then, all at once,
he broke into laughter — laughter that had a little
undertone of sadness — and began.

*Ah, well,' he exclaimed, *an old minister ought
not to be above telling a young minister of his early
blunders; and that was certainly one of mine. At
Oakhampton I indulged pretty freely my insatiable
fondness for controversy, and I suppose I was fairly
clever at it. But it was a mistake for all that. It
doesn't pay, my dear fellow, it doesn't pay. I call
those my "J^^^ Horner" days.' He laughed again,
more heartily this time. *I don't suppose,' he went
on, *I don't suppose the nursery rhyme was intended
as a personal attack upon myself, although it takes
liberties with my name; but it describes me to a
nicety. I was everlastingly putting in my thumb
and pulling out a plum and saying "What a good boy
am I!" I spent seven years in this way; and then
a thing happened that set me thinking. I was
summoned one evening to visit a man who was
dying. He was not a member of my own congrega-
tion; but his minister was out of town, and he
expressed a desire to see me. I went to him; re-
minded him of the immutable foundations of our
everlasting hope ; prayed with him ; and was coming
away filled with those emotions which every minister

The Doctor's Conversion 151

experiences under such conditions. As I gently-
clasped the dying man's hand to take farewell, he
looked into my face with a strange and wistful
sadness, and observed :

* "I wish I had understood you better years ago!"
' "Indeed!" I exclaimed. "And in what way?"
*And then he told me that it was by means of my

ministry that he had been led into the kingdom and
service of Jesus Christ. He had come to the church
one evening; I had preached a fervent evangelistic
sermon; his attention was riveted, his soul was
stirred, he had found his way to the Saviour.

* "I came back the following Sunday," he went on
to say, "but you were engaged in attacking the
proposals of the Public Buildings Committee; and
the following Sunday you were exploding the argu-
ments of a certain Mr. Clinton. All that you said
was very good and very true, and it was said with
moderation and with judgment; but, somehow, I
felt that I could not nourish my newly found faith
on that kind of thing; so I went the following Sun-
day to St. John's, and eventually joined that con-
gregation. But as I listened just now to all that you
said, and followed you in prayer, I could not help
feeling what a gain it would have been to me had I
understood you more perfectly." '

The doctor rose from my side and strolled a few
feet in the direction of the lake, pretending to be
interested in some of the elm leaves which he picked
up, autumn leaves that had come fluttering down

152 The Uttermost Star

whilst he told me his story. He tossed the leaves
away again, and resumed his seat.

*He did not mean it as a rebuke/ he went on.
'He merely intended it as a kind acknowledgment
of my services and as a personal regret. But coming
from the lips of a dying man, it affected me more
than anything I had heard for years. This all hap-
pened on the Tuesday. On the Friday I buried him ;
and during those days I could think about nothing
else.'

He paused, and again seemed to be watching the
swans, which, by this time, were out among the
water-lilies in the centre of the lake.

'During those days,' he continued, 'everything
that I read and everything that I heard seemed to
bear in some strange way upon that bedside conver-
sation. It mattered little what book I took down
from my shelves — theology, history, science, fiction
— it was all the same. It seemed bent upon rebuking
my contentious spirit. You know how, when one
dominating idea holds all your mind, everything
that you see and hear seems to stand related to it.
So was it with me. I was reading at the time an old
classic by Isaac Barrow, Newton's famous preceptor.
I had scarcely opened the book that morning before
the old professor began on this very theme. ''Avoid
controversy at any cost," he says. "The truth
contended for is not worth the passion expended
upon it. The benefits of the victory do not atone
for the prejudices aroused in the combat. Goodness

The Doctor's Conversion 153

and virtue may often consist with ignorance and
error, seldom with strife and discord." With a
heavy heart, I laid the volume aside ; and took down
Richard Baxter, who first taught me how to be a
minister. But — would you believe it? — I had not
got through half a dozen pages before my old master
burst out upon me. ''Another fatal hindrance,"
he said, "to a heavenly walk and conversation is our
too frequent disputes. A disputatious spirit is a
sure sign of an unsanctified spirit. They are usually
men least acquainted with the heavenly life who are
the most violent disputers about the circumstan-
tiality of religion. Yea, though you were sure that
your opinions were true, yet when the chief est of
your zeal is turned to these things, the life of grace
soon decays within. The least controverted truths
are usually the most weighty and of most necessary
and frequent use to our souls." I felt that my old
master had but rubbed brine into my smarting
wounds, and I returned him sadly to the shelf.
That very afternoon I had occasion to dip into John
Wesley's Journal, and under date October 9, 1741, I
stumbled upon this : "I found Mr. Humphreys with
Mr. Simpson. They immediately fell upon their
favourite subject ; on which, when we had disputed
two hours, and were just where we were at first, I
begged we might exchange controversy for prayer.
We did so, and then parted in much love, about two
in the morning." In sheer despair I returned Wesley
to his place, and forsook the theologians altogether.

154 The Uttermost Star

I picked up a volume of Darwin which, newly
purchased, lay uncut on the desk. But, to my
amazement, he was harping on the same old theme.
**1 rejoice," he said, "that I have avoided contro-
versies, and this I owe to Lyell, who many years ago,
in reference to my geological works, strongly ad-
vised me never to get entangled in a controversy, as
it rarely did any good, and caused a miserable loss of
time and temper." I put the volume back on the
desk; and, fancying that relief would surely come
with fiction, I slipped a novel into my pocket and,
after tea, went out into the fields. It happened to
be Mark Rutherford's Revolution in Tanner's Lane.
Imagine my consternation on finding one of the
characters, Zachariah Coleman, talking on this very
subject! No controversy can be of any use, he
says. "It leads to everlasting debate, and it is not
genuine debate, for nobody really ranges himself
alongside his enemy's strongest points ! It encour-
ages all sorts of sophistry, becomes mere manoeu-
vring, and saps people's faith in the truth." I went
back to the house. How I spent the rest of the
evening does not matter much to you or anybody
else; but from that day to this I have never en-
tangled myself in controversy again.'

It was getting chilly; the dusk was falling, and we
could no longer see the swans. We rose from the
seat under the elm, and I saw the doctor to his home.
As I walked back along the path under the chestnut-
trees, I thought of all that Mr. Westbrook and

The Doctor's Conversion 155

others had told me of the doctor's long, rich, fruit-
ful ministry at Willoughby Street; and I felt that
the vow that he registered on that memorable night,
more than thirty years ago, had been well kept and
amply vindicated.

IV

HEATHER AND BLUEBELLS

Come with me, and I will show you a few things well
worth seeing, and introduce you to a few folk well
worth meeting! And I promise that you will not
look back upon our excursion as time thrown away !
Come along !

I

And first to Scotland! All ministers have a soft
place in their hearts for Scotland, and with good
reason. Ministers, as becomes men who long to
excel, glory in reading the noble records of those
historic ministries that will stand as a model to all
ministers as long as time shall last. And of such
classical ministries Scotland has had more than its
share. And no wonder ! Every clear-cut phase of
national existence has its own ideal. The life of
Greece, essentially contemplative, found its ideal
in the Philosopher. The life of Rome, essentially
militant, found its ideal in the Soldier. The life of
Judea, essentially rehgious, found its ideal in the
Prophet. But just once in the world's chequered
history, one little nation, during a brief but memor-

156

Heather and Bluebells 157

able epoch in its story, found its ideal in the Minister.
Every Scottish father looked into the face of his boy
and felt that it would be life's crowning honour, a
consummation worthy of any sacrifice, if that boy
of his were to be called to the sacred engagements of
the Christian ministry.

The old schoolmaster of Drumtochty, everywhere
beloved and everywhere revered, did not often visit
the homes of his pupils. But when he did, all the
Glen knew that something of unusual importance
was afoot.

^George is a fine laddie, Mrs. Howe,' he said on
one of those rare occasions. 'What do you think
of making him?'

Marget knew that the great hour of her life had
come, the hour for which she had longed and wept
and prayed. 'There was just a single ambition in
those humble homes,' says Ian Maclaren, 'the ambi-
tion to have one member of the family at college;
and if Domsie approved a lad, then his brothers and
sisters would give their wages and the family would
live on skim milk and oatcake to let him have his
chance.'

'Maister Jamieson,' said Marget, *ma hert's
desire is to see George a minister; and if the Al-
mighty spared me to hear ma only bairn open his
mooth in the Evangel, I would hae naething mair
to ask ... but I doot sair it canna be managed !'

Out of so warm and congenial an atmosphere
there arose, as was to be expected, great ministers

158 The Uttermost Star

and great ministries. Now, standing on this bleak
and windswept hilltop, the heather almost up to your
knees, the shining waters of Loch Leven on the one
hand and the deep glades of Dunsinane Wood on
the other, have a good look around you ! For here,
among these hills and valleys, there lived, not so
very long ago, a group of ministers whose fragrant
influence will abide upon this dusty old world of
ours to its very latest day. To dip into any one of
their biographies is like stepping into a garden of
roses. For here, within easy riding distance of each
other, there lived and laboured Robert Murray
McCheyne, W. C. Burns, Alexander Somerville,
Andrew and Horatius Bonar, and a number of other
kindred spirits whose names are scarcely less fa-
miliar. They all dwelt hereabouts. But come, the
wind is too keen upon the hilltop ; let us stretch our
legs! We will stroll down through the wood, in
which primroses are twinkling and the squirrels
making merry, into the odd little village of Kinrossie.
Passing its pretty thatched cottages, its sleepy vil-
lage green, and its quaint old market-cross, we
will continue our stroll until we come suddenly upon
the Free Kirk of Collace. It was here that Andrew
Bonar — after whom Mr. Bonar Law is named —
ministered for many years. Not far away, just on
the fringe of the wood, is the old manse, almost
hidden by its tall hedges and its clump of gloomy
trees. You must come inside. This was Andrew
Bonar's study. It is a dreamy old room, with a

Heather and Bluebells 159

vine and a fig-tree climbing up on either side of one
of the windows. Now turn from that window to
this one, and look not through it but over it. And
carved deeply into the oak above the window you
will see three Hebrew words. Translate them, and
you have a text from the Book of Proverbs.
'He that winneth souls is wise/ We are in no mood
to-day to plunge into the grime and smoke of cities;
but take my word for it that if we went to Glasgow,
and visited the church in which Dr. Bonar exercised
his later ministry, you would find the same three
Hebrew words carved into the pulpit desk. Stand-
ing in this quiet room, looking out on to this beauti-
ful countryside, this Hebrew inscription seems
strangely to revive the spirit and temper of that
handful of devoted and scholarly and faithful min-
isters who, less than a century ago, made these
heathery hills and primrosed valleys to ring with the
name and fame of their Lord.

II

To England now! And again we will keep
far from the cities with their dust and smoke. Walk
with me down this winding old lane, with its great
elms arching overhead and its hedgerows all ablaze
with hyacinths, stitchworts, vetches, and wild
strawberries, and we shall come to a laughing little
stream. You can trace its course, even at this
distance, by the willows along its banks. The
rabbits, startled by our approach, scurry into their

i6o The Uttermost Star

burrows under the hedge; a hare goes bounding
off along the lane; and the finches are busy in the
hawthorn. But here is a stile! We will take this
short cut across the fields to the waterside. Just
look at the bluebells and the daffodils waving on both
banks ! A water-rat, uncertain as to our intentions,
decides to take no risks. He drops with a splash
into the water and strikes out bravely for the op-
posite shore. We saunter gently along the side
of the stream for half an hour, soothed by the music
of its murmur, and then we discover that this tran-
quil paradise is no monopoly of ours. There, just
round the bend of the stream, sits a gentle old
man, with rod in hand, his basket beside him, and
his attention riveted upon his line. Now, to tell
the whole truth, it is to meet this good old English
gentleman that I have brought you here. He is
one of the most lovable, one of the most thoughtful,
and in every way one of the best men of his time.
His hair is white as snow; there is a slight stoop
at the shoulders, partly caused by age and partly
by much bending over his beloved reel; but these
are the only hints he gives of having long since
passed his eightieth birthday. His face is strong and
sometimes sad — for he has known terrible sorrows
— yet it is suffused by a certain indescribable sweet-
ness. His eye is bright and keen, especially when
near the water, yet always infinitely restful. He is
dressed neither showily nor shabbily, but with a
pleasant trimness that suggests dignity and self -re-

Heather and Bluebells i6i

spect. When we speak to him you will discover that
his voice is as soft as velvet and as musical as the
waters beside which hie spends his days. No Eng-
lishman is better worth knowing. He breathes, as
Lamb said to Coleridge, the very spirit of innocence,
purity, and simplicity of heart. For this is Izaak
Walton, courtly, scholarly, saintly; and I have rea-
sons of my own for seeking his society to-day.

As soon as I discovered the three Hebrew words
over Andrew Bonar's window in the old manse at
Kinrossie, and again on the pulpit desk at Glasgow,
I turned at once to the commentators. The words
had aroused my curiosity, and I was anxious to
ascertain their exact significance. 'He that winneth
souls is wise.' The commentators, however,
disappointed me. They suggested that the verb
translated *winneth' is an angler's word; and then,
like battleships hard pressed, they vanished in a
cloud of smoke. Still, in a world like this, we must
be thankful for small mercies; and the commen-
tators have at least given us an interesting clue.
He that is wise catcheth souls as an angler catches
fish. Now if there is one man among my circle of
friends who knows everything about angling it is
old Izaak Walton. To him, therefore, always the
soul of patience with honest inquirers, let us submit
our problem. We must state it in the abstract.
It is of no use mentioning the manse at Kinrossie,
or the church at Glasgow; for Andrew Bonar was
not born until poor old Izaak's bones had rested for

1 62 The uttermost star

more than a hundred years in their peaceful and
grassy grave. To you and me, sublimely superior
to the trivial accidents of time and space, that is a
mere circumstance; but the old gentleman himself
might find it a little confusing. The three Hebrew
words, however, stood upon the pages of his Bible
just as they stood upon the pages of Andrew Bonar's
Bible; and just as they stand upon the pages of
mine. See! The old gentleman has risen; he
has thrown some ground-bait into the stream to
secure his sport for the afternoon; and now he is
retiring for the enjoyment of his lunch to a cosy
niche against the gnarled trunk of that old willow-
tree! Let us go forward!

Ill

*The words bear out,' says the gentle old man,
after we have duly introduced ourselves and
explained our mission, 'the words bear out what I
have so often said to my own honest scholars. The
work of catching men is very similar to the sport of
catching fish. That is why four anglers — Peter,
Andrew, James, and John — had priority of nomina-
tion in the catalogue of the twelve apostles. Our
Saviour found that the hearts of such men were,
by nature, fitted for contemplation and quietness;
they were men of mild and sweet and peaceable
spirits, as most anglers are. The words that have
puzzled you mean that to be a successful fisherman,
a man must be very fond of his work. He must love

Heather and Bluebells 163

fishing and give his whole mind to it. Master
John Bunyan, in that strange conceit which he has
this very year pubHshed and which he calls his
Pilgrim's Progress, truly says :

You see the way the fisherman doth take

To catch the fish ; what engines doth he make I

Behold how he engageth all his wits ;

Also his snares, lines, angles, hooks, and nets:

Yet fish there be that neither hook nor line,
Nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine;
They must be groped for and be tickled too,
Or they will not be catch'd, whate'er you do.

*Now in order that you may the better perceive
the meaning of these three Hebrew words that have
so perplexed you, let me teach you the four rules
of the angler's art, which I have cast into verse that
they may be the more readily retained in the recol-
lection of my own scholars :

Be sure your face is towards the light:

Study the fish's curious ways :
Then keep yourself well out of sight:

And cherish Patience all your days.

He that will learn those four precepts and obey them
will make a happy and successful angler, and will,
if he so desire, acquire the wisdom that is celebrated
in the Hebrew words you brought me.' By this
time the old gentleman has finished his lunch and is
looking wistfully towards the spot that he so well

1 64 The Uttermost Star

stocked with ground-bait. We may wish him a
merry afternoon's sport and take our leave of him.

IV

And now, before we ourselves part company, let
us spend a moment in my study surveying the spoils
of our expedition. We have the three Hebrew
words that we brought back from Scotland — 'He
that winneth souls is wise.' And we have this curi-
ous specimen of versification that we picked up
among the bluebells by the English stream :

Be sure your face is towards the light :

Study the fish's curious ways :
Then keep yourself well out of sight:

And cherish Patience all your days.

What are we to make of this? Let us take it to
pieces, and examine the various parts under a
microscope. And let the Angels of the Four Corners
of My Study unfold its hidden meanings to us.

'Be sure your face is towards the light!' *The
skilful angler will always be careful to see,' says
the Angel of the Eastern Corner, 'that the sun
shines upon his face and that his shadow falls behind
him. He who turns his back to the sun and lets his
shadow darken the stream has said good-bye to all
the trout. The only man who can hopefully angle
for fish or for folk is he of the Radiant Face, he of
the Shadow Unseen !'

'Study the fish's curious ways!' *Let no man

Heather and Bluebells 165

think/ exclaims the Angel of the Western Corner,
'that he can become a successful angler by learning
all about lines and hooks and rods and reels! He
must study fish. He must mark their varying
habits, watch their curious ways, and consider their
fastidious tastes. He must know the things that
please them, the things that repel them, and the
places in which they love to lie. He who would catch
fish must study fish; he who would catch men must
understand men!'

'Then keep yourself well out of sight!' *He who
would return from the river-bank with a heavy
basket,' observes the Angel of the North Corner,
'must angle with a long line! He must keep as
far from the stream as he possibly can. No man
ever yet secured large catches, either of fish or of
men, who was fond of thrusting himself into inordi-
nate prominence !'

'And cherish Patience all your days!' *You will
need it,' exclaims the Angel of the South Corner.
'There will be times when you will have to wait for
long, long periods without so much as a nibble;
and you will be tempted to give it all up ! And you
will be beset by a multitude of unexpected diffi-
culties. "Oh, the tangles, more than Gordian, of gut
on a windy day! Oh, bitter east wind that bloweth
down stream ! Oh, the young ducks that, swimming
between us and the trout, contend with him for the
blue duns in their season ! Oh, the hay grass behind
us that entangles the hook! Oh, the rocky wall

i66 The Uttermost Star

that breaks it, the boughs that catch it; the drought
that leaves the salmon-stream dry, the floods that
fill it with turbid, impassable waters ! Alas, for the
knot that breaks, and for the iron that bends; for
the lost landing-net and the gillie that scrapes the
fish!" But the angler who has the spirit of his
craft will keep smiling in spite of long delays and
heart-breaking disappointments, and will enjoy the
unspeakable rapture of the fisherman's triumph at
the last r

V

And somehow I fancy that the Angels of the Four
Corners have unwittingly expounded for us, not
only the quaint old jingle that we found among the
English bluebells, but those majestic Hebrew words
that we saw amidst the Scottish heather.

V

THE VILLAGE GREEN

A WISE old place is the Village Green. Since last
I felt upon my spirit the fragrant breath of its
peaceful benediction, I have crossed many seas and
trodden many shores, but nowhere have I seen
anything to equal it. Like all the best things in life,
the Green is very modest; it does not advertise its
virtues. As you drive round the bend of the dusty
road, and, before plunging into the village itself,
glance casually across the Green, you feel that it is
the very essence of idyllic stagnation and dreamy
repose. The signs of life are few and far between.
Two old men sit smoking their long clay pipes in the
deep shade of the clump of elm-trees in front of the
inn; some ducks are scouring the pond yonder in
quest of the frogs whose hoarse voices were so
conspicuous last night; half a dozen cows lie, sleepily
chewing the cud, round on the far fringe of the
Green, where the grass is long and sweet, because
scarcely ever trodden; some fowls from the row of
cottages at the corner of the lane are foraging after
grasshoppers in the shorter grass down by the pop-
lars; swallows are skimming gracefully hither and

167

i68 The Uttermost Star

thither, paying frequent visits to the pond, and occa-
sionally settling for just a moment on rails and posts
and empty seats ; a few creamy butterflies are danc-
ing gaily over the grass on their way to the flaunt-
ing sunflowers that call loudly from the garden of
the inn ; but, save for these, there are no indications
that anything is doing on the Green. To all intents
and purposes the Green is fast asleep, and everything
about it is also slumbering in the luxurious sunshine
of this summer afternoon.

Look across the pond, and you will see the old
church sleeping among its gnarled and shady yews.
The inn, down by the elms, is asleep. The horses
round about the door, and the dogs sprawling at
their feet, are all asleep. The cottages down at
the corner of the lane are dozing too; lulled to rest
by the droning of the bees around their scent-laden
gardens. Everything appears to slumber. The very
grasses nod half sleepily, and the whole place is
wrapped in profound repose. You jump to the
conclusion that nothing ever happens on the Village
Green. But that is part of life's vast illusion. The
people who do the world's work are all of them
leisurely souls; they never hustle or bustle; they
never get flurried or flushed.

I once attended a farewell meeting tendered to a
minister who, after a remarkably fruitful and
prosperous pastorate extending over more than
twenty years, was laying down his charge. The
great hall was crowded ; there was a sense of genuine

The Village Green 169

sadness and poignant emotion in the temper of the
meeting; the speakers vied with each other in sound-
ing the good man's praises. I have forgotten all
that they said. But I distinctly remember the
utterance of a man who, towards the close of the
meeting, craved the chairman's permission to add a
single sentence. 'I have met Mr. Falkland nearly
every day of my life for twenty years,' he said, *and
I have never yet seen him in a hurry!' Mr. Falk-
land told me afterwards that he treasured that
tribute as the highest of the compliments paid him
at the meeting. He had entered into the secret of
the Village Green.

There are souls that are so calm just because
they are so strong. Mr. Harold Begbie has told us
the story of Dolly, the actress, who, amidst all
the whirl and the excitement of her public life,
was overtaken by an affliction that rendered her
stone deaf. Then, at last, freed from the rush and
flurry of things, she had time to think. She thought
especially of her children. Would she like them to
model their lives on the style of her own? Then she
thought of her widowed mother-in-law, so quiet, so
tranquil, so patient, yet so strong. As she contem-
plated the life and character of this beautiful old
lady, Dolly felt for the first time the wisdom of
goodness. 'She had lived a good life; her heart
was pure; her hands were clean; her eyes were full
of sweetness.' But she was dying. Dolly deter-
mined to hasten to her bedside and crave of her, so

lyo The Uttermost Star

that she might hand it on to her children, the inner
secret of her radiant and lovely life.

*The widow put out her hand towards her Bible,
but checked herself, and took a pencil and tablet
which rested on a table at her side, and wrote the
words :

In returning and rest shall ye be saved;

In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.

She did not point out the words in Isaiah, because,
with her fine spirit, her thoughtfulness for others,
which lasted to the very end of her life, she knew
that poor Dolly would be hurt by the concluding
words, ''And ye would not." Her finger pointed to
the word "Rest" for a long time. Then it moved to
''Quietness" and "Confidence" and finally to
"Strength" where it tarried. Then she gave the
paper to Dolly, and smiled into her eyes.' The
strength of stillness! The conquest of the quiet!
That is the secret of the Village Green.

You would think, I say, to look at the Village
Green, that nothing ever happens there. The fact
is, of course, that everything happens there. The
Village Green is a parliament and a playground and
a pasture and a pulpit — and everything else ! Why,
on the old seats there under the elm-trees, the seats
that are smothered with rudely carved initials, the
village cronies have sat smoking in the dusk,
generation after generation, discussing the merits
of rival statesmen and the splendid problems of

The Village Green 171

empire. Out there, too, on the centre of the Green,
cricket-matches have been played that have, for
long weeks beforehand, been the subject of animated
speculation among all the hamlets and villages for
miles around; and that have, in the result, made
history. For you would not dare to confess, to the
enthusiasts who sometimes gather beneath the elms,
or sprawl upon the soft and fragrant grass, that you
have never witnessed the prowess of certain well-
known players who, once the pride of this very
Green, were elevated to the fierce prominence of
county contests, and are now named with respect
in every pavilion and clubroom throughout the
world ! On any Saturday afternoon, or in the long
delicious evenings of midsummer, you may stand
here on the edge of the Green, and, whilst the
swallows skim cunningly about you, may hear these
ploughmen and wagoners, bent with the heavy toils
of tilth and pasture, tell for the thousandth time of
the wild excitements that convulsed the Green in
their days when a batsman of undying fame, who
afterwards achieved international distinction, was
the terror of every visiting team.

Nor must I forget the avenue. Running right
athwart the Green — leaving the cricket-ground, the
clump of elms, and the inn on the one side; and the
pond, the poplars, and the drowsy old church on the
other — is a glorious grove of stately oaks. Here
again, every fifty yards or so, you will find seats
beneath the trees. But you will notice that, in

172 The Uttermost Star

contrast with those under the elms, these seats are
almost innocent of the carved initials. It is true
that these are not quite as ancient as those; but
that, in itself, does not explain the difference.
When these seats have held their places as long as
those beneath the elms have now done, the number
of initials cut in the wood will still be very small.
The reason is not very obscure. The elm-trees,
with the seats beneath them, form a natural pavilion
for the cricket-matches and the sports upon the
Green. There schoolboys congregate, having in
their cavernous and comprehensive pockets knives
of such superior calibre and keenness that 'twere a
pity not sometimes to display their powers! And
generations of batsmen, waiting, during the innings
of their side, for their own turn to bat — or to field —
have relieved the hours of tedium by plying their
nervous fingers there. But the avenue is never the
resort of the crowd. The avenue, you would soon
learn if you stayed many days in the village, is
consecrated by long tradition to the sacred rites and
ancient mysteries of love-making. You cannot
stroll up this umbrageous roadway after dusk with-
out meeting at least one couple who will make you
feel that they can content themselves without your
company. And you will discover, perhaps with
some slight flush of embarrassment, that all the
seats are not unoccupied. It is just as well that these
wooden things are mute. If they became magically
invested with the power of speech, every housewife

The Village Green 173

in the village would clamour for their destruction,
for have they not heard the whispered secrets of
every home? The lovers of six generations have
trysted and courted and quarrelled — and kissed
again — within the shady shelter of these protecting
trees; and they may have had reasons of their own
for not carving their names upon the seats. Perhaps
the light was not too good; perhaps they had other
fish to fry; perhaps they had no desire to leave a
perpetual record of their presence there. At any
rate, the seats beneath the oaks escape such mutila-
tion, as any one can see who cares to look.

Grave and gay is the Village Green. If you want
to see its gaiety, come some winter's day when the
pond is frozen, and half the countryside is on skates.
Or, better still, come some winter's night. I
remember walking down to the Green one delectable
moonlight evening, when everything was sparkling
with the glittering whiteness of the heavy hoar frost.
The arched network of branches overhead looked as
though it had been worked in silver and sprinkled
with star-dust. It was bespangled with millions
of infinitesimal diamonds. Showers of these tiny
gems seemed to have fallen off, beje welling the road
beneath. It glistened in front of you, and clanked
like iron beneath your tread. How one's cheeks
glowed and one's ears tingled on a radiant night like
that ! And long before I reached the Green I could
hear the shouts and laughter of the skaters on the
pond. Or, if you are not prepared to wait for such

174 The Uttermost Star

another winter's day, come along some fine morning
when the hounds meet at the inn! The bravery of
the huntsmen, resplendent in their scarlet coats ; the
pride of the glossy horses, all restless with life and
eager to be off; the joviality and excitement of their
masters and mistresses, some in the saddle and some
standing in little groups holding their horses' heads ;
the yelping of the dogs; the sounding of the horn;
the chatter of the cottagers who have come to see
the start — here is gaiety such as none of your
crowded cities could give you on an autumn morn-
ing ! Or, if you would see the Green taking its night-
time merriment, come on the evening of a fair-day
or a fete-day, when the trees all twinkle with fairy-
lamps ; the village band plays near the elm-trees ; and
there is dancing on the Green. The trampling on the
grass of so many feet loads the evening air with the
strong, pungent odour of the turf; the mind is
intoxicated with the prevailing sense of revelry;
and the muscles dance involuntarily to the lively and
captivating strains.

Oh, yes, the Green knows how to be gay ; but the
Green knows how to be grave. Have I not seen the
Village Green turned into a church, and that not
once, but many a time? As a boy I heard Mr.
Moody preaching on the Village Green. He was the
first preacher of world-wide fame to whom I had
ever listened. I have heard many of our pulpit
princes since; and often, in the years that followed
that service on the Green, I again heard Mr. Moody.

The Village Green 175

But, when I think of him, it is the thought of that
Sunday afternoon that rushes back upon my mind.
The temporary platform on which he stood; the
great black crowd; the languor of the sultry
summer's day; the smell of the grass; the American
twang in the preacher's voice; the text; the line
of reasoning; the telling illustrations, and, above all,
the passionate appeal, — these all come back upon me
as I write. To me, at any rate, they are all in-
separably associated with the picture of the Village
Green. I said that I have seen this happen many
and many a time. Aye, and not only in actual
experience, but upon the pages of our best literature.
How often, I wonder, did John Wesley preach on
the Village Green? John Wesley brought about
the greatest revival of religion in our history, and,
according to Lecky, saved England from all the
horrors of a terrible revolution. And this master-
piece of daring evangelism and sanctified statesman-
ship was accomplished very largely on the Village
Green.

For the matter of that, every Village Green is
crowded with preachers. For what is the green but
so many millions of blades of grass? And what is
more eloquent than a blade of grass? When God
visited the earth amidst the dews of Creation's
earliest morning, the first thing that awoke to greet
Him was a blade of grass. Until then the earth was
without form and void, and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. Then God came ! And the grass

176 The Uttermost Star

came ! And the grass led out the new age. It was
the first thing on the planet, and it will be the last.
As soon as that first blade of grass peeped out upon
a world uncultivated and unoccupied, it vowed that
it would conquer and possess every mountain and
valley, every continent and island, every inch of soil
the wide world over! And it did! It sprang up
everywhere. It spread a carpet for the feet of the
living and a covering for the graves of the dead.
We brush it back sometimes in order to build a
house, or a city, or an empire, just as children some-
times keep back the tide for a while by building a
brave castle with walls and outworks; but it is only
for a while. The castle topples to pieces, and the
water flows in ; the empire crumbles at last ; and the
grasses wave proudly over the sites of fallen cities.

*We have covered many square miles of earth
with buildings,' says Mr. Scammell, in his Cheap-
side to Arcady, *and the birds look down on a prov-
ince of grey instead of the beloved and familiar
green. Six miles or more outward from the centre
of London lies the boundary-line of the world of
trees and grass ; but we are surrounded and hemmed
in by the sweet enemy, and nothing but the strenuous
trampling of our millions of feet prevents the speedy
reconquest of our city by the kingdom of vegetation.
Some day the feet will be fewer and less strenuous ;
houses will fall and not be rebuilt ; the tide of green
will flow in, and that which was London shall be
once more field and forest.' Casual passers-by re-

The Village Green 177

gard the grass as an ephemeral thing, here to-day
and gone to-morrow. But the wise know better.
The old yew-trees there behind the church are a
thousand years old; but the grass was there before
the yew-trees sprouted, and the grass will still be
there when the yew-trees are no more. If you bend
your ear, you will hear a whispering among the
grasses. The grasses on the Green are always whis-
pering. And there is a ripple of quiet laughter run-
ning through all that they say. It is the laughter of
conquest.

Preachers of immortality are these deathless
grasses on the Green. Did not Peter once draw a
striking and dramatic analogy between the three
most persistent things on the planet — the grass, the
man, and the Word of the Lord? Tor all flesh,'
he says, 'is as grass, and all the glory of man as the
flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the
flower thereof falleth away; but the Word of the
Lord endureth for ever.'

The Grass! The Man! The Word!

These are the three most universal, immortal,
invincible things on the face of the earth ! The grass
withers, and the petals of its flower blow away on
the wind; yet it rises again and conquers every-
thing! Man drops into the grave, and his glory is
forgotten; yet, like the grass, he is everywhere,
master of everything, the most godlike thing under
the stars! But the Word outshines them both;
for it never even fades or falls, never even dries or

178 The Uttermost Star

dies. 'It liveth and abideth for ever!* Year in
and year out, it is as fresh and as sweet every morn-
ing as the dewy grass on the Green ; and, age in and
age out, its glory grows from more to more.

Crowded with preachers is the Village Green.
Perhaps that is why George Eliot chose the Village
Green as the scene of Dinah Morris's sermon. 'She
stood with her left hand towards the descending sun,
and leafy boughs screened her from its rays; but
in this sober light the delicate colouring of her face
seemed to gather a calm vividness, like flowers at
evening. It was one of those faces that make one
think of white flowers with light touches of colour
on their pure petals. The eyes had no peculiar
beauty, beyond that of expression; yet they looked
so simple, so candid, so gravely loving, that no
accusing scowl, no light sneer, could help melting
away before their glance.'

Dinah spoke of John Wesley, whom she had heard
preaching on a Village Green, and whom she, as a
child, had imagined to be a special messenger sent
down from heaven. As she gazed upon his finely
chiselled face and pure white hair, and as she listened
to his deep, rich voice and earnest speech, she had
wondered if he would suddenly vanish and be caught
up into heaven again !

And then Dinah spoke, as Wesley himself had
spoken, of Jesus. 'The Son of Man is come to seek
and to save that which is lost' — this was her text.
With womanly winsomeness and womanly entreaty,

The Village Green 179

she drew the hearts of the villagers towards her
Saviour. Beneath the vast dome of St. Paul's or
under the spreading branches of the elm-trees, it is
a great and wonderful evangel; and we may very
well leave the Village Green now that we have again
caught the sweetness of that heavenly music.

VI

THE SIEVE

I WAS spending a few days at the spacious farm-
house that nestles under the shadow of Saddle Hill.
It was getting towards evening. The boys had, one
by one, sauntered in from the stables and the fields ;
the girls had returned from the byre. It was past
tea-time; yet the evening meal stood untasted on
the vast kitchen table. The snowy cloth was
temptingly spread; piles of white scones and crisp
oatcakes tantalized the appetite: the kettle sang
merrily on the hob; and yet we waited. For my
good hostess, the farmer's wife, had gone to town
for a day's shopping, and had not yet returned.

*If she catches the five-twenty, she'll be home in
ten minutes,' pleaded Jean, with a coaxing glance at
her hungry brothers. 'Let's wait till then !'

And, surely enough, in a few minutes there was a
sound of wheels, and the good woman came bustling
in with her parcels. The daughters of the farm
withdrew to their mother's room, primarily, of
course, to help her off with her hat and coat, and,
just incidentally, to have a peep at her purchases.
And then, to the undisguised satisfaction of the

1 80

The Sieve i8i

boys, the family circle was completed, and the meal
began. All went merrily until, in the very midst of
our festivity, the chink of cups and the hum of con-
versation were suddenly interrupted by my hostess.
In answer to a question from Bella, she threw her-
self back in her chair, lifted her hands in a gesture of
amazement, and exclaimed :

*Why, I do declare, I forgot the very thing I went
for. Oh dear, oh dear ; I've got a head like a sieve !'

Now I spent so many delightful days under her
hospitable roof that I am reluctant to subject her
utterance to public criticism. And yet I cannot
allow her unhappy metaphor to pass unchallenged.
A memory like a sieve, indeed ! No simile could be
more false to fact. It is the essential property of a
sieve to allow the fine sand to escape whilst retaining
the larger nuggets. But did she not herself tell us
that it was the important thing — the very thing
she went for — that slipped her memory? That is
characteristic of the memory. It is very rarely like
a sieve. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is
the big things that elude it, whilst a conglomeration
of trifles remains.

In one of his soliloquies the Poet at the Breakfast-
table tells how, an old man now, he distinctly remem-
bers being cheated out of sixpence by an old straw-
berry-woman at an English fair fifty years ago. Yet
a hundred matters of really first-class importance
have failed, during that half -century, to make any
lasting impression on his memory! *What an odd

i82 The Uttermost Star

thing memory Is,' he exclaims, in telling the tale,
*to have kept such a triviality and to have lost so
much that was invaluable! She is a crazy wench,
that Mnemosyne; she throws her jewels out of the
window, and locks up straws and old rags in her
strong-box.' A man remembers the first fish that
he ever caught long after many of the more vital
events In his career have faded from his mind.
With perfect clearness he will recall to his dying day
the shining, scaly trout, flapping in its death-flurry
on the green bank under the willows. The winning
hit that a man once made for the school eleven
lingers in his thoughts long after the twists and turns
of his later history have passed Into the obscurity of
forgetfulness. The thrill of that glorious moment
will rush back upon him In his last illness. These
are the happenings that haunt the memory.

Perhaps the apparent discrepancy is due to our
false estimate of things. It Is possible that the
memory has a truer sense of proportion, a more just
perspective, than we are wont to suppose. An artist
does not select his subject because of Its commercial
value or historic importance. A rustic cottage may
be much more attractive to his brush than a king's
palace, a parliamentary building, or a stock ex-
change. Memory claims to be allowed to judge
things, as the artist does, by standards of her own.
I was talking one day to a friend of mine who, a few
years ago, lost his sight. He was telling me that he
remembers with singular vividness a walk that he

The Sieve 183

once took from his native town in England to a
neighbouring village. He v^as sent by his father
with a most important message. But he has for-
gotten now what that message was. He only
remembers a squirrel that he saw in a beech-tree
down the lane along which his journey took him.
Now my blind friend would, at the time, have
regarded the business that took him along the lane
as of very much greater moment than the squirrel
he saw perched saucily in the beech-tree; but the
memory has tossed to the scrap-heap the mission on
which he travelled, whilst he sees the squirrel to-day
as clearly as he saw it thirty years ago. And, on
the whole, he is convinced that memory is right. The
squirrel is the thing that is best worth remembering.
As I sit scribbling on this Australian verandah,
and think of my own childhood on the other side
of the world, I find that the things that most easily
rush back upon me are not the important things. I
remember — oh, how clearly! — my first circus!
I went up to the top of our street in the dinner-hour
to see it enter the town ! The elephants, the camels,
the cages of wild beasts, and the huge triumphal
cars ! On one, at a height that made me dizzy as I
looked up, sat Britannia, attended by a bevy of
beautiful princesses; on another sat a haughty
conqueror, surrounded by his officers and followed
by his slaves. Here in the procession rode Red
Indians in full war-paint, with moccasins and bowie-
knives. There were men of all kinds and colours;

1 84 The Uttermost Star

how could I ever forget the wonder of that tremen-
dous moment? And then there was the day when,
a small boy, I went to school as usual and was told
on arrival that Mr. Farncombe, the old schoolmaster,
was dead! Would I like to see him? I was afraid,
and did not like to say so ; at last stammered feebly
a reluctant consent; and was led, with half a dozen
other shrinking and terror-stricken youngsters, past
the coffin in which our old master lay so frightfully
stiff and still. Can I ever forget that weird, uncanny
moment, or the strange, unearthly dreams of the
night that followed? And then there was a day
when there was some little commotion in the home.
I forget what it was all about; I know that my
mother was ill in bed, and sent to know the cause of
all the hubbub. As a result, I remember that I
was haled before her, charged with having done
something or other of which, as it happened, I was
entirely innocent.

*And did you do it?' my mother asked, looking
up from her pillows.

'No, mother !' I answered.

*Then that's the end of it,' she said to the nurse
who had me in charge. *If he says he didn't, he
didn't!'

I was set at liberty, and scampered away feeling
that my mother was the sweetest creature that ever
breathed, and thinking what a horrid thing it would
be to deceive her.

These are the things that the memory treasures.

The Sieve 185

They do not seem to be the critical hours of a man's
experience, the pivotal points on which his career
turned. Life would have gone on in pretty much
the same way if these things had never happened.
And yet it may be, as I have suggested, that the
memory has a more just standard of values than we
sometimes think. Let me look at these things again.
The day on which I saw the circus was the day on
which a world-consciousness was born within my
soul. I had read of elephants that crashed through
African forests, and of camels that crossed Arabian
deserts, and of tigers that haunted the jungles of
Bengal. I had heard of conquering heroes, of
tattooed savages, of feathered Indians, and of
woolly-headed slaves! But here they all were!
I was too excited to reflect that it was largely a
matter of dye and drapery ! To me it was the world !
All the continents and islands had suddenly swept
into my soul. In bewildering and overpowering
pageantry, they burst upon me all in a moment!
And my memory treasures not the objective cause,
which was trifling, but the subjective effect, which
was tremendous! And that ghostly scene at the
old school ! My memory clings to it as the occasion
on which death and I first looked into each other's
faces. And the incident in my mother's bedroom!
It was the hour in which I learned the meaning of
faith. My mother trusted me; believed me
implicitly; and life seemed a greater, holier thing
in consequence. Is it not possible that memory

i86 The Uttermost Star

discriminates with extraordinary insight and
wisdom ? She knows what to hoard up and what to
throw away. Like the artist, she has her own
standard of values; and the more we examine that
standard, the more we shall admire it. The little
things she treasures so jealously are, more often
than not, the biggest things in life after all!

Moreover, there is this to be said. The memory
not only knows what to keep, but, having kept it,
she knows where to find it, and how to use it, when
the occasion at length arises. In It is Never Too
Late to Mend, Charles Reade tells how a party of
miners belonging to the gold-diggings in New South
Wales went for a stroll one Sunday and came upon
the settlement of a new immigrant who had brought
out with him from England a caged lark. The
savage men gathered round the cage, but the bird
was strangely silent. *And then the same sun that
had warmed his little heart at home came glowing
down on him here, and he gave music back for it
more and more, till at last, amidst the breathless
silence and the glistening eyes of the rough diggers
hanging on his voice, out burst in this distant land
his English song. Sometimes, when he paused, a
loud sigh from many a rough bosom, many a wild
and wicked heart, told how tight the listeners had
held their breath to hear him; and when he swelled
with song again, he seemed to every one of those
rough men to be singing of the green meadows, the
quiet brooks, the honey clover, and the English

The Sieve 187

spring. Shaggy lips trembled, and more than one
drop trickled from fierce, unbridled hearts down
bronzed and rugged cheeks. For these shaggy men,
full of oaths, and strifes, and cupidity, had strolled
about the English fields with sisters and brothers,
had seen the lark rise and had heard him sing this
very song. Those old playmates lay in the church-
yard, whilst they themselves were full of oaths, and
drink, and lusts, and remorses; but, in this
immortal song, no note was changed. And so, for
a moment or two, years of vice rolled away like a
dark cloud from the memory, and the past shone
out in the song-shine. They came back, bright as
the deathless notes that lighted them, those faded
pictures and those fleeted days; the cottage; the
old mother's tears when he left her without one
grain of sorrow; the village church and its simple
chimes; the clover-field hard-by in which he lay
and gambolled while the lark praised God overhead ;
the chubby playmates that never grew to be wicked ;
the sweet hours of youth, and innocence, and home !'
When the treasure was stored away in the casket
of memory, it was only the trill of a lark in the
English fields; but, like pence that had been
magically transformed into pounds, it became
invested by the passing years with a deep significance
and a spiritual value. Many of the really funda-
mental events in the lives of these Australian diggers
the memory had tossed away. She had kept no
record of them. But she had carefully treasured

1 88 The Uttermost Star

up the song of the lark and the vision of the English
fields. And she knew why. Her discrimination is
almost infallible. I wonder if any such thought
entered into the mind of the Great Teacher when He
spoke of laying up for ourselves treasures that no
moth can corrupt, that no rust can defile, and that
no thief can break through and steal?

PART III

SLIP I

The deck of an ocean-liner in a tropical sea is the
laziest place on the planet. Nobody dreams of
promenading. During the intervals between meals
the deck-chairs are all occupied, and each chair is
carefully adjusted to such an angle that the occupant
is practically reduced to horizontality. Fancy-
work reposes peacefully on the laps of the ladies,
and a few brave spirits keep up a pretence at reading.
But the book, however exciting, fails to grip; and
every now and again the hand collapses beneath its
burden, whilst the eyelids involuntarily close. For
the rest, we sprawl and doze and dream, and await
the sounding of the next gong.

Henniker and I had just come up from afternoon
tea. We sat down side by side and abandoned
ourselves to the prevailing lethargy. I must have
fallen asleep ; for when I opened my eyes, the chair
that Henniker had occupied was empty, and the
Chief Engineer was approaching. He took the
vacant seat, and, after a few preliminary inquiries
and observations, began to talk about things in his
own department. He was disappointed, it seemed,

191

192 The Uttermost Star

with the previous day's run. We had done three
hundred and thirty knots; he thought it should
have been three hundred and forty.

*Well,' I said, *and how do you account for it?'
'Oh,' he repHed, 'it can only be owing to slip/
I had to confess that the expression conveyed
nothing to my mind, and he considerately proceeded
to dispel my ignorance.

*0h, well, you see,' he explained, 'all that we
can do down in the engine-room is to see that a
maximum of power is generated by the furnaces
and communicated by the engines to the shaft.
But a certain waste of energy takes place between
the propeller and the water. It may be that a
heavy sea lifts the screw into the air occasionally.
Or it may be that the pitching of the vessel keeps
the screw too much in the light water near the
surface instead of in the heavier water deeper down.
Or it may be that, for some other reason, the water
does not offer the necessary resistance to the blades
of the propeller. That waste of energy, however
it occurs, we call slip. Yesterday, if the slip had
been normal, we ought to have done three hundred
and forty knots. As it is, we only did three hundred
and thirty. The slip must have been more serious
than we thought.'

Almost immediately he was called away. But as
I sat there on the deck, with the empty chair at my
side, I found that the information with which the
Chief Engineer had supplied me provided food for

Slip! 193

a good deal of reflection. One has not to go to an
ocean-liner in Mid-Atlantic in order to discover cases
of slip. Accidents will happen in the best regulated
families. Wherever there is a generation of energy,
there is a greater or smaller escape of energy.
Wherever there is pov^er, there is slip. Indeed, in
thinking it over since, I am convinced that my
friend, the Chief Engineer, is less troubled by slip
than most of us. His work is liable to slip at but one
point — the point at which the propeller strikes the
water — whilst the work of most of us is subject to
slip at quite a number of points.

Take the artist, for example. He comes most
readily to mind, because I have just left him. I
was strolling along the beach this afternoon, enjoy-
ing the expanse of blue water to my right, the stretch
of yellow sand before me, and the riot of green for-
estry extending to the horizon on my left. I clam-
bered over a pile of rocks round which the waves
were playing, and, under their shadow, came sud-
denly upon a painter busy at his easel. He was fac-
ing a massive bluff of red sandstone surmounted by
a tangle of tea-tree and scrub. I entered into con-
versation with him, and was soon confirmed in mv
impression, that, in his case, slip may occur, not at
one point, but at several. To begin with, however
carefully he may scrutinize the great cliff in front
of him, something of its ruggedness and beauty is
sure to escape him. A greater artist would discover
some gleam of light or shade that he fails to notice.

194 The Uttermost Star

And with the greater artist it is only a matter of
degree; he would observe more, but he would still
miss something. Then, in the second place, there
is a certain amount of slip in expression. My
friend the artist confessed that he could never
convey to his canvas all the beauty that he did see.
The picture in his soul is always a little lovelier than
the work upon the easel. And then, later on, there
is a certain amount of slip in the eye of the admirer
of the picture. For the picture is not for the painter ;
it is for the public. And the most appreciative
observer never sees in the picture all that the artist
sees in it. At these three points, therefore, there
is slip. There is slip in the painter's observation of
the subject treated; there is slip in his attempt to
express on canvas the beauty that has charmed his
eye; and there is slip in the perception of the
spectator who afterwards gazes, however sympa-
thetically, upon the painter's handiwork.

But I owe the artist an apology. I have pressed
him into my service violently and at random. Like
Jephthah's daughter, he was the first person I met
in the course of my seaside cogitation of my theme;
and I consequently seized upon him as my victim.
But he will not, I hope, object to my stating that
anybody else would have served my purpose just
as well. It is true that nobody sees in the picture
all that the painter puts there; but, then, the same
principle holds true of every worker. Supposing,
when I clambered over the boulders that projected

Slip I 195

into the surf, supposing that I had found, reclining
in the shade on the other side, not an artist, but a
statesman, or a musician, or an author, or a preacher.
Either would have provided me with an equally
welcome victim, and, like Jephthah, I should have
hurried him off to my altar. For, however carefully
the statesman expounds his proposals to the House,
his scheme is never perfectly apprehended. A
certain amount of slip occurs in his own exposition
of his ideas; and a further element of slip character-
izes the perception of his hearers; and so the policy
that reaches their intelligences is little more than a
shadow of the splendid project that stirs his soul to
such enthusiasm. And as he listens to the damaging
speeches of his opponents, and reads the adverse
criticisms of the newspapers, he is tortured by the
conviction that, to a very large extent, he has been
misunderstood. It is a case of slip. It is the same
with the musician. The most fervent admirers of
Beethoven, or Wagner, or Chopin, or Handel, do not
hear in the oratorio all the sublimities and profundi-
ties that swept the soul of the composer when first he
committed his passion to paper. Only the author
can perfectly appreciate a book. His writings must,
of course, stand or fall by the judgment of others.
It is his business, not only to think great thoughts,
but skilfully to convey those thoughts to other
minds. His fine conceptions will not excuse his
faulty expressions. But for all that, the fact
remains that the most brilliant writer cannot so

196 The Uttermost Star

arrange his language as to make it a perfect vehicle
for his thought. Something is lost in communicat-
ing his meaning to his manuscript. And even the
best of readers sometimes nods. All that the author
thought is not written ; and all that is written is not
read; and so, at both stages, slip takes place. And
if, resting on the sands, I had chanced upon a
minister, I am certain that I should have found
him a victim exactly to my taste.

For neither the artist, nor the statesman, nor the
musician, nor the author is as much troubled by slip
as the preacher. At the outset, the themes with
which he deals are so sublime, so awful, so incom-
prehensible, that, in the nature of the case, his
conception of them must be very partial and very
inadequate. Then, like the statesman and the
author, he is under the humiliating necessity of
employing language as the medium of his thought.
And it is a very imperfect medium. As Tennyson

says:

. . . words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the soul within.

Words — even if he always selects the best words —
mean different things to different people, and convey
different notions at different times. And then,
again, he does not always select the best words.
The man has never been born whose command of
language amounted to absolute perfection; and, so
far as it falls short of absolute perfection, he must
perforce convey by his utterance something less.

Slip! 197

or something more, or something other than his
meaning. In spite of all oaths and affidavits, no
man ever yet told the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth. It is not in the power of
mortals to do it. Let two men, transparently honest
and scrupulously careful, tell of an experience
which they have shared; and the tales will differ
materially in the telling. The impression conveyed
by the one will diverge at several points from the
impression created by the other. Language being
what it is, and the human mind being what it is, it is
impossible to speak without unconsciously under-
stating, or overstating, or falsely stating the case.
A liberal quantity of slip must therefore characterize
the attempt of the preacher to express to his hearers
his own very imperfect conceptions. And what of
the congregation? Even if all his conceptions were
immaculate, and all his language faultless, he must
still allow for a certain amount of slip. Between
his own lips and the perceptions of his hearers there
are innumerable avenues for the leakage of his
energy. The acoustic properties of the building
may not be perfect. The ears of the congregation
may not be good. Sultry conditions or defective
ventilation may induce drowsiness. And then,
even at the best of times, thoughts are wayward
things. Minds will wander. Even during the
delivery of his most impassioned periods, the men
will, in a flight of fancy, shp back to their offices;
the mothers will be once more among the little ones

iqS The Uttermost Star

at home; the young men and maidens will be
dreaming romantically of each other. Everything
is not heard; and, even if heard, everything is
not fully comprehended. Slip occurs at every
point.

The only remedy for this lies in sane and judicious
repetition. It is the duty of the pulpit to say the
same things over and over and over again. They
must be clothed in different phraseology, and illu-
mined by fresh illustration, and approached by a
new line of thought; but the things that are really
worth saying must be said repeatedly. Allowances
must be made for slip. I remember that, some years
ago, an idea laid hold of me with more than ordinary
force. It was burning in my bones. I felt it my
duty to give utterance to it at every possible oppor-
tunity. I took it into my pulpit, and stated it, as
effectively as I possibly could, to my own people.
A week or two later I was invited to speak at a
Methodist anniversary. I delivered my soul again
on the same theme; but I noticed in the audience
one gentleman, a prominent citizen, and a man of
considerable culture and devotion, whom I distinctly
remembered to have seen in my own congregation
when I first broached the theme. A week later I
was under an engagement to address a large public
meeting in the City Hall. I once more harked back
to my old subject; and, to my horror, as I was
speaking, I caught sight of the face of my former
hearer. I felt ashamed to be saying the same things

Slip! 199

to him a third time. But I thought of the words,
^ Jesus saith unto him the third time . . . ' and pro-
ceeded to state my case as forcibly as I knew how.
At the close of the meeting, as I was leaving the hall,
I found my friend waiting, and not to rebuke me.
*I was greatly impressed/ he said, 'by what you
were saying to-night,' and he went on to tell me of
what he himself proposed to do in the matter.
He gave no hint of having heard me speak on the
subject twice previously. Apparently I had then
made no impression. Whether it was my fault
or his is beside the question. The point is that slip
takes place, and we must allow for it. 'Jesus saith
unto him the third time' — and so must we.

It may be that, one of these days, we shall discover
that the slip of life is less than we fancied. We may
find that the escaped energy, although it did not
propel the ship, served some other useful purpose.
Longfellow made some such discovery :

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I know not where ;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air.
It fell to earth, I know not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterwards, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

200 The Uttermost Star

Those who make such dehghtful discoveries may be
left to enjoy their felicity undisturbed. But, since
we are living in a world in which some arrows go
astray and some songs fall flat, it is as well to take
no risks. A wise man will allow for slip. Does the
arrow appear to have missed its mark? He will
draw the bow again. Does the song seem to have
reached the heart of nobody? He will straightway
tune his voice, like Browning's thrush, to sing a
second time.

II

THE FOUR IDOLS

We are all idolaters. It is in the blood. Race
memory is a wonderful thing. Old Bruno lies
sprawling there on the mat. The children can pull
at his ears; the kittens can play with his tail. He
takes no notice. He blinks and bears it. What is
he dreaming about as he lies dozing there with his
nose resting on his paws, the very picture of tameness
and domesticity? Jack London says that a dog
only has one dream. He is back in the forest
primaeval. He is dreaming of the old wolf-days;
the days when his ancestors were fierce and wild;
the days when every mouthful of food was won by
ripping and slashing, by the stern authority of tooth
and fang. He is a wolf yet in the soul of him, a
wolf with all his wolfishness under severe and galling
restraint. And so, I say that, after the same fashion,
we are all idolaters. We may not now worship Thor
and Woden, Freya and Tyr, at least under those
names; but we have our idols yet. Francis Bacon,
in a passage which Macaulay regarded as among the
very greatest and most influential contributions ever
made to literature, charged us with worshipping

20I

202 The Uttermost Star

four. And he named them. Beware, he said,
beware of the Idols of the Tribe ; beware of the Idols
of the Cave; beware of the Idols of the Market-
place; beware of the Idols of the Theatre! Bacon
was concerned with these counterfeit divinities as the
enemies of pure reason, the foes of accurate thought,
the perverters of sound judgment; but we need be
bound by no such narrow limits.

There is the Idol of the Tribe. It is the contagion
of the crowd; the tendency to applaud when the
multitude applauds and to hiss when the people hiss ;
the disposition to do as everybody else does. A
recent traveller speaks of a certain island upon which
he came in the course of his voyagings. It was a
perfect paradise. Its climate was of the softest;
its vegetation the most luxurious; its flowers the
most beautiful and fragrant; its birds of the most
exquisite and gorgeous plumage. The inhabitants
seemed, on first acquaintance, to be gentle and
kindly. But, to his horror, he quickly discovered
that the people cherished the most hideous and
revolting superstitions, and practised the most
frightful and abominable cruelties. No individual
member of the tribe could defend these horrible
proceedings. Indeed, each individual, consulted
separately, condemned and deplored them. Each
trembled lest he should himself one day fall a victim
to their insatiable demands. Yet the thing went on !

The Four Idols 203

It had always been so ; it had never been challenged ;
everybody on the island submitted to it; nobody
thought of questioning its continuance. Each was
the victim of all, and, unwittingly and unwillingly, m
each helped to tyrannize all! Here, then, is the ^
Idol of the Tribe ! One has not to go to the South
Seas to find it.

Why do we dress as we do — one way this season
and another way next season? Why do we dress
one way; the Chinese in another way, and the Red
Indians in still another w^ay? Who ordains these
arrangements, both as to general outline and par-
ticular style ? We obey the Idol of the Tribe. Here
are two brothers, Oliver and Godwin Peak, engaged
in conversation. They are, of course, George Gis-
sing's creations, but I may borrow them from Born
in Exile. 'Oliver was going out ; his silk hat, a hat
of the very latest fashion, lay with his gloves upon
the table.

'What is this thing?' inquired Godwin, with
ominous calm, as he pointed to the piece of headgear.

*A hat, I suppose,' replied his brother.

*You mean to say you are going to wear that in
the street?'

*And why not ?'

'Can't you feel,' burst out Godwin, 'that it's a
disgrace to buy and wear such a thing ?'

'Disgrace! What's the matter with the hat? Ifs
the fashionable shape I'

Godwin turned contemptuously away. But

> 'J

b4 The Uttermost Star

Oliver had been touched in a sensitive place, and
was eager to defend himself.

*I can't see v^hat you're finding fault with,' he
exclaimed. 'Everybody wears this shape!'
i "jj 'Everybody!' replied Godwin, with withering
"^ disdain. 'Everybody. How you can offer such
an excuse passes my comprehension. Have you no
selff Are you made like this hat, on a pattern with
a hundred thousand others T

Now what in the world is this that we have
unexpectedly discovered in listening to two brothers
as they discuss the hat that lies upon the table?
It is nothing less than a resurrection of the Baconian
philosophy ! For see !

'Everybody wears this shape!' pleads poor
Oliver.

'Everybody! Have you no self?' demands the
angry Godwin.

It is Godwin's way of charging his brother with
being a worshipper of the Idol of the Tribe.

Now, if the Idol of the Tribe threw the baneful
glamour of his superstition only over hats and
gloves, skirts and blouses, nothing would have in-
duced me to meddle with it. But, unfortunately, his
spurious divinity aspires to preside over much more
serious things. For, like mantles, morals are largely
a matter of fashion. 'Succeeding generations,' says
a great historian, 'change the fashion of their morals
with the fashion of their hats and their coaches;
take some other kind of wickedness under their

The Four Idols 205

patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their
ancestors.' For centuries we tolerated slavery.
The whole thing was fraught with anguish and
shame. But then — everybody did it! And be-
cause everybody did it, no one troubled much
about it. Each worshipped secretly the Idol of
the Tribe.

I sometimes fancy that, even in our churches, the
Idol of the Tribe is worshipped more often than we
think. Here is a great evangelistic service! The
hearts of men are strangely stirred. Each person
feels that, if he were alone in the universe, he would
become a Christian. But he is not alone. The place
is crowded. The last hymn is sung. The people
stream out into the street. There is chatter and
laughter and noise. The sacred impressions are soon
forgotten. Everybody does it. The Idol of the
Tribe has secured his costliest oblation at the door of
the sanctuary.

II

There is the Idol of the Cave. The cave is the
home. There the man is monarch of all he surveys.
An Englishman's home is his castle. In designing ^

it, in constructing it, in furnishing it, he thinks of ^^ q[
nothing but its comfort. He will make everything'K m^^^
as congenial, as agreeable, as snug as it can possibl^^
be made. And so far all is well; nobody can find
fault with him. But our philosopher is afraid that
he may carry his craze for comfort a little too far.

2o6 The Uttermost Star

For a man is more than a mere cave-dweller. He
has a mind; he has a heart; he has a soul! He
needs not only things, but thoughts; not only
furniture, but faith. He is a thinking animal, an
emotional animal, a believing animal. Whether he
means to do so or not, he will find himself providing
himself with a small stock of convictions. He may
do it deliberately and systematically; or he may do
it casually and absent-mindedly; but he will do it.
It is a race-habit. And the danger is that, unless he
is very careful, he may select the articles of his faith
on the same principle on which he selects the articles
of his furniture. He will gather together a few
agreeable conclusions; he will provide himself with
a comfortable creed; he will fit himself out with a
neat Httle stock of congenial beliefs; and then he
will rub his hands, lie back at his ease, and congratu-
late himself on his shrewd discernment and excellent
taste.

This is the Idol of the Cave. Beware of it ! says
Bacon. He would have me to know that I cannot
select my conclusions as I select my chairs ; I cannot
pick and choose a few beliefs as I would pick and
choose a few bedsteads. Bacon says that I should
cultivate the habit of distrusting my agreeable
conclusions. Whenever I find myself believing w^hat
it is pleasant to believe, I must carefully investigate
the matter. It may be that I am worshipping the
Idol of the Cave. It may be that I believe this thing
just because it is nice to believe it. I am to suspect

#

t The Four Idols 207

my agreeable conclusions. To suspect them; not
necessarily to reject them. Bacon is too wise a guide
to counsel me to reject a conclusion simply because
it is so attractive. As a great Christian he knew as
well as I do that some of the things that are most
credible are the things that are most delightful.
We believe them, and find it heaven to believe them.
But v/e do not believe them because they are so
captivating. Only a Stoic, an ascetic, a misanthrope,
would ask me to reject a conclusion because it is
so charming. To adopt such a course would be, not
to worship the Idol of the Cave, but to fall prostrate
before a still more hideous god. Bacon would never
encourage such idolatry. Suspect your agreeable
conclusions, he says. Do not reject them, but over-
haul them. Analyse them; verify them; confirm p
them. (V^ ciii ^^L^^ - *"

in L<^ •KMr-wCeii'-L, ^

There is the Idol of the market-place. The
Market-place was a great place in Bacon's day. A
world that knew nothing of our modern ways of ad-
vertisement and swift communication got over its
difBculties by bringing everything to the Market-
place. And the Market-place is a good place. God
has built His world very largely on a commercial
basis. Barter and sale are the essence of Hfe. The
Market-place is for money-making; and there is
nothing but good in the making of money as long as
the money is made in the Market-place. The rival-

2o8 The Uttermost Star

ries of commerce have sharpened the wits of the
race. The desire of each man to provide a better
article than his neighbour has prompted a hurricane
of invention and discovery. *There are,' says Dr.
Alexander Mackennal, 'two services which wealth
may render to society; the pursuit of it may make
strenuous men; the employment of it may make
generous men ; he who tries to gain what he may lib-
erally use will become both strong and noble through
the discipline.' Here, then, is the sanction and glory
of the Market-place.

But the making of money must be kept to the
Market-place. That is the significance of the story
of the Cleansing of the Temple. Jesus, we are told,
*went into the temple of God, and cast out all them
that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew
the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of
them that sold doves.' And why? Is it not good
to buy and sell, to exchange coin, to offer doves for
sale to those who need them ? It is — in the Market-
place! But not in the Temple ! Jesus was protest-
ing against the commercialization of that which
never ought to be commercialized. He was hurling
out of the Temple the Idol of the Market-place.

This stone image of a god — is it a good thing or a
bad thing? You say it is a bad thing. But was it
a bad thing in the quarry? Is it bad, that is to say,
in itself, or has it been made bad by the hands of
bad men? These coins — are they good or bad?
It depends on the use to which they are put. As

The Four Idols 209

soon as you introduce the commercial spirit into
something outside the Market-place, you are in
trouble. What about the commercialization of
sport? Is not sport a good thing? But the
introduction and rapid development of the pro-
fessional spirit has largely been its undoing. Is it
not a striking thing that the Puritans, who con-
demned almost every form of recreation and enjoy-
ment, kept racehorses ? Cromwell did. He thought
that the matching of horse against horse was one
of the most stimulating forms of enjoyment, and
that the opportunity of meeting his friends on the
turf was conducive alike to physical and intellectual
recreation. What has reduced horse-racing from
this high pinnacle to the plane on which it stands
to-day? The answer is obvious. We have com-
mercialized that which did not lend itself to com-
mercialization. Or take politics. Are not politics
a good thing? But when Sir Robert Walpole
waves his hand towards the members of the House
of Commons and exclaims, *A11 these men have
their price !' we feel that the lowest depth of degrada-
tion has been sounded. The thing has been com-
mercialized. It is the worship of the Idol of the
Market-place. As soon as you commercialize a
good thing, whether it be a temple, a football-field,
or a Parliament, you degrade it. As soon as you
commercialize a bad thing, you perpetuate it.
Could our fathers have borne so long with slavery,
and could we have borne so long with the liquor evil,

2IO The Uttermost Star

but for the vested interests involved ? Beware, says
Bacon, of the Idol of the Market-place.

IV

There is the Idol of the Theatre. Now to under-
stand what Bacon means we must glance at tlie
theatre as it existed in Bacon's day. The drama
was then a very primitive affair; and among the
most notable respects in which it differed from the
drama of to-day stood the fact that there were no
actresses. And why were there no actresses ? Why
were women prohibited from appearing upon the
stage? Why were the feminine parts all played by
boys? If we can solve that problem, we shall catch
just that subtle element in Bacon's thought that led
him to speak of the Idol of the Theatre. The fact is
that those Elizabethan pioneers of the modern
drama thought that women are naturally so sym-
pathetic, so intense, so fervidly emotional, that the
very process of projecting themselves in imagination
into the personalities which, in their stage parts,
they represented, would leave some permanent
impress upon the individuality and character of the
actress. They felt that women would become
affected, tainted with unreality, and spoiled.

Beware, then, says our great English philosopher,
beware of unreality! Does not the very word
'hypocrisy' mean 'the playing of a part'? It is
essentially a stage word. Beware of the Idol of the
Theatre! Once more our philosopher would apply

The Four Idols 211

the warning particularly to thought. Beware of
pretending to accept conclusions that are not really
your own. Beware of pretending to reject conclu-
sions that, in your secret soul, you acknowledge!
There are two kinds of hypocrites. There are the
people who pretend to be a great deal better than
they are; they are the minority. And there are
those who pretend to be a great deal worse than they
are; they are the majority. There are those who
pretend to be Christians, and are not; and there
are those who pretend not to be Christians, and are.
Both are playing a part; they are indulging in an
affectation ; they are tainting their souls with unreal-
ity; they are guilty of hypocrisy. Bacon would urge
both of them to give up their play-acting. Beware,
he would say, of the Idol of the Theatre !

V

Miss Kingsley tells of a certain medicine-man in
West Africa who found himself at death's door.
He applied all his herbs and spells, and conducted all
his well-worn rites before his idols without any ef-
fect. At last he wearied of his hocus-pocus, and
took his idols and charms down to the sea-shore and
flung them into the surf, and he said, 'Now I will be
a man and meet my God alone !' The greatest hour
in a man's life is the hour in which he spurns the Idol
of the Tribe, the doing of what everybody does; the
Idol of the Cave, the doing of what is agreeable to
him; the Idol of the Market-place, the doing of what

212 The Uttermost Star

pays him best ; and the Idol of the Theatre, the doing
of that which does not reflect his real and genuine
self; and stands an honest, sincere, and penitent
idolater in the august Presence of the Holiest of All.

Ill

HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR

For many a long year Tammas Dalgleish was Mayor
of Mosgiel, and reigned without a rival. At election
after election the little old gentleman was returned
unopposed. Indeed, it came to be regarded as the
natural thing. Nobody quite knew why. I have a
notion that it was just because Tammas was old.
The other members of the Borough Council were
aggressive young townsmen, the warmth of whose
ardour incubated all kinds of municipal policies, and
the restlessness of whose brains littered the council
table with an infinite variety of schemes. The
result was inevitable. As soon as Councillor
MacDonald stated his policy, the council fell into
two parts as though it had been cleft by a sword.
Half the councillors said 'Hear, hear,' and half
shook their heads sagaciously, and muttered to
each other that it would never do. And when, a
few weeks later, Councillor Campbell outlined his
scheme, the council was once mxore rent in twain.
Half the councillors supported; half opposed. The
same fate befell each of the other councillors in turn.
There was only One member of the council who

213

214 The Uttermost Star

never concocted a fresh policy or formulated a new
scheme. That was Tammas Dalgleish. His absti-
nence in that respect gave him an immense advantage
when the mayoral election came round. Councillor
MacDonald would have made an excellent Mayor,
and his claims upon the honour were considerable;
but then, he had a scheme! His elevation to the
mayoral chair would place him in a position of
commanding influence; it would invest him with a
casting vote and other dangerous prerogatives;
and it would probably lead to the adoption of his
scheme. The hostile councillors said once more
that this would never do. And so it came to pass
that none of the councillors, save Tammas Dalgleish,
could command a majority of votes when the elec-
tions came round. Year by year, therefore, as
regularly as the second Saturday in November
returned, it was announced from the verandah of
the council-chambers that only one nomination had
been received, and that Councillor Dalgleish had
been declared elected for a further term. The little
old gentleman beamed, expressed his sense of the
honour that had been done him, and promised that
he would endeavour to prove himself worthy of the
confidence of the citizens. Which meant, being in-
terpreted, that he promised to sink peacefully into
the chair for another year, never daring to think out
a policy himself, or even to say Yea or Nay to any of
the troublesome schemes that the younger and
noisieir councillors might present. It all passed off

His Worship the Mayor 215

very pleasantly. There was speaking and cheering
and drinking of healths. Everybody seemed per-
fectly satisfied with the turn things had taken. And
certainly Tammas Dalgleish was.

He was an amiable little old man, not destitute of
frailties. One of these was his excessive modesty.
He was terribly afraid that we should forget either
that he was a Scotsman, or that he was Mayor of
Mosgiel. He had every reason to be proud of both
these circumstances; and, as a matter of fact, there
was not the slightest danger of our forgetting either;
but he was obviously nervous about it. In the course
of my twelve years at Mosgiel I came to know him
pretty well, although only on two occasions did I
have direct dealings with him. Of those two events
I propose to tell the story now; and if into the first
narrative there steals a suspicion of comedy, it will
be seen that the second story is sufficiently dramatic
to atone for that defect in its predecessor. But to
my tale.

It was in the days of the South African War.
When it was announced that Lord Kitchener was
conferring with the Boer leaders at Pretoria, every-
body felt that peace was not far off. This conviction
fastened upon the mind of old Tammas Dalgleish,
and he decided to call a meeting of citizens to ar-
range for a worthy celebration of the glad event —
when it should come. He was good enough to call at
the manse and ask me to be present. I very cheer-
fully consented. At the meeting, over which he pre-

2i6 The Uttermost Star

sided, a programme was drawn up, a committee was
appointed to carry it into effect, and, at His
Worship's suggestion, I was appointed convener.
We soon got things into shape and only awaited the
declaration of peace to have everything moving.
At last the welcome signal was given. The scream-
ing of syrens, the ringing of bells, and the booming
of guns apprised all and sundry that the war in
South Africa had passed into history. I hurried
down to the council-chambers, found His Worship
there before me, and we soon got to work. The
morning was occupied with the distribution of
medals to all the children of the town. The main
event of the day was timed for two o'clock. All the
townspeople were asked to assemble at the junction
of the main streets; led by the local band, they were
to sing first the Doxology and then the National
Anthem; and, after that, the procession was to start.

At two o'clock, however, rain was threatening.
The outlook for the procession and the subsequent
events was very gloomy. When I entered the
council-chamber a few minutes before the hour, I
found His Worship in a state of extreme tension.
He was tortured by visions of trees being planted
and foundation-stones laid under torrential skies.

*Come on,' he said impatiently, as I saluted him,
'let us get the procession away at once! What's
to be done ?'

*Very little, your Worship,' I replied, handing
him a fresh copy of the programme. *You have

His Worship the Mayor 217

simply to ask the people to join in singing, to the
music of the band, first the Doxology and then the
National Anthem/

I saw at once that he was displeased. He was for
waving his hand and ordering the procession to start.
I held out for the programme, the whole programme,
and nothing but the programme.

'Well,' he exclaimed at last, in a more conciliatory
tone, 'let us split the difference. Let us drop the
Doxology and sing the National Anthem T

I pointed out that the Doxology was singularly
appropriate to the occasion; that it was specially
decreed at the meeting of citizens; that it was on the
printed programme; and that its omission would
seriously wound the sentiments of many of the
citizens.

His Worship lost all patience. I saw ten minutes
later that he imagined the Doxology to be some
ponderous kind of oratorio that might detain the
procession for a good part of the afternoon. But I
did not grasp his point of view until, looking daggers
at me, he sprang up, rushed bareheaded on to the
verandah, raised his hand to secure silence, called
at the top of his voice, 'The band will lead the
people in singing the Doxology,' and then added,
with terrific emphasis, 'One verse only/ In the years
that followed, it was quite a common occurrence,
when things were getting lively in the council-
chamber, for one of the councillors to suggest that
they should sing together the second verse of the

2i8 The Uttermost Star

Doxology! And His Worship always smiled good-
humouredly.

It happened, a year or two later, that Dr. Harry
Grattan Guinness came to Dunedin and conducted
a series of special meetings in the largest theatre
there. I was unable to go into town to any of the
earlier meetings, but I saw that the series was to
conclude with a couple of illustrated lectures, one
on South America and the other on the Congo. I
promised myself at least one of these; and, on the
night of the South American lecture, I set off for
the city. The lecture and the pictures far exceeded
my anticipations. I was delighted, and resolved to
return next evening. On my way to the station
the following evening, whom should I meet but His
Worship the Mayor? To this hour I cannot tell
why I suggested such a thing; but before I knew
what I was saying I was inviting him to accompany
me ! He was the last man on earth whom you would
think of inviting to a missionary lecture.

*You ought to come, sir,' I was saying. *I went
last night, and did not mean to go again; but the
lecture was simply splendid, and the pictures were
magnificent. I am sure you would enjoy it.'

Before I realized what had happened, he had
accepted my invitation, and we were walking side
by side on our way to the station. I spent most of
the time in the train wondering by what strange
impulse I had asked His Worship to accompany me.
That riddle was still unread when we reached the

His Worship the Mayor 219

theatre. It was filling fast. Surveying the crowd
we noticed a couple of vacant seats about half-way
up the area and slipped into them.

As on the previous evening, the lecture was most
interesting, and the pictures were among the best of
the kind that I have ever seen. For all practical
purposes we had left New Zealand miles behind, and
were in the wilds of Central Africa. An occasional
side-glance at my companion told me that he was as
interested as I was. Then, suddenly, a change came
over the spirit of our dream.

*I propose now to show you,' said the lecturer, 'the
photographs of some of the men who have laid down
their lives upon the Congo.'

I was afraid that this purely missionary aspect
of African life would possess less interest for His
Worship, and I was prepared for yawns and other
indications of boredom. The coloured pictures of
African scenery gave place to the portrait of a fine
young fellow in the prime of early manhood. To
my inexpressible astonishment His Worship almost
sprang from his seat, grasped the back of the chair
in front of him, and stared at the screen with
strained and terrible intensity.

Tt's my boy !' he cried, loudly enough to be heard
some distance away. Tt's my boy ! It's my boy !'

I naturally supposed that he had been affected by
some curious similarity of appearance. Fortunately
his agitation had not been noticed from the platform,
and the lecturer went on.

220 The Uttermost Star

*This,' he said, 'is a young fellow named Dalgleish
who came to us as an engineer to superintend the
construction of our mission steamer. . . /

*It's my boyJ' cried my companion, overcome
now by uncontrollable emotion. *It's my boy, my
poor boy !'

Neither of us had eyes or ears for anything that
followed. His Worship sat beside me, his face
buried in his hands, swaying from side to side in
silent agony. Every now and again he would start
up, and I had the greatest difficulty in restraining
him from rushing to the platform to ask more about
his dead son. Sitting there beside him, it came back
to me that he had once told me of a boy who ran
away from home and went to London. *We were
too angry at the time to answer his letters,' he had
said, *and so, after awhile, he gave up writing, and
we lost all trace of him.' When the great crowd
melted away that night, I took His Worship to the
lecturer's room, and introduced them to each other.
The identity of the fallen missionary was established
beyond all doubt, and Dr. Grattan Guinness ar-
ranged to come out to Mosgiel and spend the next
day with the Mayor and his wife.

He did. I was not present, and I do not know
what took place. But I often fancied, from little
indications that I noticed afterwards, that the things
that were said, and the tears that were shed, in the
course of that visit were a means of grace to my
friend, His Worship the Mayor.

IV

THE LANTERN IN THE LANE

The soul of the artist shone through his wrinkled
face. I really believe that, had his great gift been
encouraged and trained, he would have taken his
place among our most eminent Australian painters.
I shall never forget the last time I saw him. After
a long drive across the plains and round the foothills
we reached Wattle Glen just as dusk was falling.
He and his wife — a gentle old lady, with a soft,
musical voice, and hair as white as his own — came
out to the car and insisted that we must stay the
night. During the evening she took me into the
front room and showed me the pictures he had
painted since my previous visit.

'But he will never paint any more,' she said,
with that subdued sadness with which very old
people speak of increasing infirmities. *His sight
is failing fast. He only recognized you by your
voice when I led him out to the car.'

As we rose, after an evening of pleasant remi-
niscence, to take our candles, a sweet and tearful
smile played over her face, and, stepping towards
me, she said :

T must tell you a little secret. It is our Diamond

221

222 The Uttermost Star

Wedding-day. We were married just sixty years
ago this morning. That is one reason why we were
so delighted to see you, and so anxious for you to
stay the night. We should like you to lead us in our
thanksgiving.'

I blew out the candle and returned it to the table,
taking instead the Family Bible that she handed to
me. She turned with a flush of pride to the entry
that was just sixty years old. I was deeply touched
by being permitted to lead them in their worship
on that memorable night ; and when I rose, with the
glow of the sacred exercise fresh upon my spirit, I
had no desire to open fresh conversation. An
immediate retirement seemed more in keeping with
the eternal fitness of things. I turned to go. And
then, to my surprise, the old gentleman broke the
silence.

'Those were beautiful words that you read,' he
said, 'about the light shining in a dark place ; would
you mind repeating them?'

I took the Bible and read again: 'We have also
a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well
that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a
dark place, until the day dawn and the day -star arise
in your hearts/ He leaned forward, listening in-
tently.

'Beautiful pictures!' he murmured, lying back in
his chair, as though totally unconscious of our pres-
ence. 'Beautiful pictures! I have never painted
anything like that !'

The Lantern in the Lane 223

I took my candle and retired, puzzling over his
words. And yet, when I looked at them again, I
was surprised that I had never noticed the vivid
artistic touches in those graphic phrases. The
pictures sailed before my fancy now like a series of
dissolving views. 'A dark place!' 'A light that
shineth in a dark place!' 'The dawn!' 'The day-
star!' It is a perfect gallery of masterpieces!

'A dark place!' There rushes instantly to mind
some tortuous track. It is hedged about by dense
forestry; it winds and twists and forks and
branches ; the huge boughs overhead blot out the sky.
The traveller who, with no light to shine upon his
path, attempts to thrid this labyrinth, is in a pitiable
plight indeed. He cannot see his hand before him!
He stumbles over a gnarled root ; he kicks against a
heavy stone ; he puts his foot into a hidden burrow ;
his face is torn by a straggling wisp of thorn. Some-
times the continuous crunching of the scrub beneath
his feet tells him that he has left the track altogether.
It is a dark place. It may be that Peter's picture
suggested Dante's. Dante tells of the time when,
at the age of thirty-five, he awoke to the fact that he
was lost.

In the midway of this our mortal life,

I found me in a gloomy wood, astray,

Gone from the path direct : and e'en to tell

It were no easy task, how savage wild

That forest, how robust and rough its growth.

224 The Uttermost Star

Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.

But where is this dark place, so vividly described
first by Peter and then by Dante? Do they mean
to say that the world is a dark place? And, if so,
is it true? Is the world a dark place? Is it not
bathed in brightness? Is it not the best of all
possible worlds — a world that makes you glad to be
alive? Can any man look upon a field of corn all
flashing with red poppies; or upon a range of snow-
capped mountains piercing the blue canopy above;
or upon the sun sinking to rest in a tropical sea;
or upon the waves dashing themselves into spray on
a rock-bound coast; and declare, in spite of all this,
that he is living in a dark place? Can any man who
has ever gathered wild flowers in the lane; or w^ho
has made friends with the furry creatures of the
woods; or who has marked the plumage of the birds
out in the forest ; or who has seen a salmon glitter as
it comes flashing from the stream ; can any such man
say that the world is a dark place? Can a man
watch the children romping on the village green;
or listen to the song of the nightingale ; or drink in
one long liquid peal of laughter ; or take part in the
boisterous fun by the fireside, and say that the
world is a dark place? When my old friend spoke
admiringly of this picture, among others, on his
Diamond Wedding-day, was he thinking that the
world is a dark place? But let us jump to no hasty
conclusions. Does Peter really say that the world

The Lantern in the Lane 225

is a dark place? Or does he merely affirm that the
world would be a dark place if it were not for the
Bible? This sure word of prophecy, he says, is
like unto a lantern shining in an otherwise dark
place, and, by its illumination, saving the place from
its own darkness !

And perhaps that is a true description of the world
after all. It must be true, or my old friend would
not* have thought it so artistic. The world is not a
dark place. At least, it is not a dark place for us.
But it would be a very dark place for us if we had
no Bible, no knowledge of God, no clear revelation
of His love and care. And it is still a very dark
place for those to whom these priceless blessings
have not come. Take the savages, for example.
Barbaric people live for the most part in climes
where Nature is more prolific, more gorgeous, more
luxurious, than in these temperate zones. And yet
life under such conditions, so far from being a pic-
nic, is a night-mare. The savage is surrounded by
companions whom he cannot trust, and he feels him-
self to be at the mercy of natural forces of which he
is horribly afraid. Every puff of wind that blows
upon him is the breath of a demon. The air is full
of hateful and malignant spirits. He knows not at
what moment they may take it into their heads to
destroy him. He lives in Paradise, but his Paradise
is Purgatory to him. We know no such terrors.
We have been taught that all these forces are under
control. We have come to feel that they are gov-

226 The Uttermost Star

erned by inscrutable wisdom, by unerring justice, by
infinite love. We may or may not be decidedly
Christian; but we have read our Bibles, or come
under the influence of those who have. And the
sacred revelation there made has banished all super-
stitious horrors. We are calm, restful, unafraid.
The world is not dark, but delightful. Yet it is only
delightful because of the lantern in the lane.

II

'Beautiful pictures!' murmured my old friend
on his Diamond Wedding-day, sitting back in his
chair and conjuring up before his sightless eyes the
fair dreams that my reading had suggested. 'Beau-
tiful pictures! I have never painted anything like
that!'

The lane !

The lantern in the lane I

But my old friend saw a third picture. The dawn
is breaking! The day-star is in the sky! As yet,
it is true, the light is dim, crepuscular, uncertain.
You are glad that you have the lantern in your
hand. But, still, the darkness has gone! The grey
dawn is filtering through the branches overhead;
And, high above you, is the Morning Star! What
did Peter mean, I wonder, by this third picture?
He leaves us in no uncertainty. For see ! * . . .a
light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn
and the day-star arise in your hearts!' It is the
light breaking within! It is the dawn of Christian

The Lantern in the Lane 227

experience! In his Horae Subsecivae Dr. Brown
comments on the picture of Luther in the Convent
Library at Erfurt, and he lays stress on the fact
that, as Luther pores over the sacred pages, the
dawn comes stealing in through the windows.
'The young monk,' he says, *is gazing into the open
pages of a huge Latin Testament — we can see that
he is reading the opening chapters of the Romans.
A few dangling links indicate that the Bible was once
chained — to be read but not possessed — it is now
free and his own ! Next moment he will come upon
— or it on him — the light from heaven, shining out
from the words ''Therefore being justified by faith,
we have peace with God," and, in intimation of this,
His dawn, the sweet pearly light of morning, shining
in at the now open lattice, is reflected from the page
upon his keen, anxious face.' That is a touch of
real spiritual genius. The imagery is unmistakable.
The monk was reading the Bible in a dark place,
when, suddenly, the day dawned, and the day-star
arose in his heart !

The dawn! When the dawn comes stealing
through the trees, the old lane becomes a new place.
The branches are choral with song, and the air stirs
with the hum of insect life. 'The day dawn from
on high hath visited us!' sang the aged Zacharias
when his lips were unsealed by the spirit of proph-
ecy. He saw that the dawn had come, and that the
old world was pulsing with a new and strange awak-
ening. Yes, when the dawn comes stealing through

228 The Uttermost Star

the trees, the lane becomes a new place. In With
Christ at Sea Frank Bullen has a great chapter
entitled The Dawn.' It is the story of his con-
version. And he tells how, having been led to faith
in Christ by those majestic and inspired words that
he had heard read to him by the seamen's mission-
ary, the whole world seemed a new place to him.
The leaves seemed greener, the sky bluer, the flowers
sweeter. It was 'the dawn I To such a man the
old lane is a dark place no longer ! It is heaven upon
earth! The dawn has broken! The day-star has
arisen in his heart ! His faith is fortified now by the
strongest of all possible arguments — the argument
of experience. The things that he has felt and
known may not convince others; but they have lifted
him beyond the reach of doubt.

Ill

And as I let my memory play about the look of
triumph on my old friend's face that night, I am
convinced that, among the pictures on which his
blind eyes were so rapturously gazing, there was
still another, and that other the brightest of them
all. For is not the dawn the promise of the day?
Is not the Morning Star the harbinger of the Sun
himself! To be sure! If the exquisite symbolism
of the apostle means anything, it means that those
of us who have kept the track in the darkness by the
help of the lantern — the light that shineth in a dark
place — shall yet walk down the old lane amidst the

The Lantern in the Lane 229

splendours of noonday, our eyes enchanted by a riot
of colour and our ears charmed by a festival of song.
I never expect to visit Wattle Glen again in this
life. And, even if I do, I shall find that its glory
has departed. The old artist and his gentle com-
panion no longer journey together there by lantern
light. The vacant stare has passed for ever from
his eyes. I may find their names engraved on a
stone in the little God's-acre close to the church.
But his artist soul feasts upon the beauty that is
ineffable, and revels in the fadeless light of heaven's
eternal noon.

THE HOLLY-TREE

I KNOW a holly-tree, a grand old holly-tree. It may
be that there are other holly-trees with leaves as
green and berries as bright; but, if so, they are
unknown to me. The holly-tree whose praises I am
singing stands beside the lovely lawn of a fine old
up-country residence; its leaves always look as
though they had just been cleaned and varnished;
and the brilliant berries are a dazzling riot of red.

I used to wonder why the birds are so fond of the
holly-tree. They are no more comfortable among
prickly leaves than I am; and everybody knows
that the berries are not particularly palatable.
But the other day Mr. J. W. Go f ton let me into the
secret. The holly-tree is a sanctuary. *The tree,'
says Mr. Go f ton, 'sheds a great many of its leaves
after the summer has set in. These remain on the
ground in thick profusion, and so formidable are
their hard and pointed spines to the feet of such bird-
hunters as the cat, the weasel, and the fox that these
creatures dare not attempt to walk across them.
Consequently the birds soon find out that they can
secure immunity from danger in a holly-bush; and

230

The Holly-Tree 231

throughout the autumn and winter a vast number
of sparrows, Hnnets, buntings, blackbirds, and some
starHngs spend their nights in peace and quiet
among its branches.' It is pleasant enough to lounge
on the lawn on a sunny autumn afternoon, and,
amidst the trees that are strewing all the ground
with russet and gold, to admire the old holly-tree in
all its bravery of scarlet and green. But it is even
more pleasant, when the darkness closes in, and we
draw our chairs up to the fire, to reflect that, out
there beside the lawn, a score or more of timid,
shrinking, feathered things have found a peaceful
sanctuary, secure from all their foes, under the
kindly and powerful protection of the holly-tree.

Now the holly-tree is not alone in this. The law
of sanctuary is written e;very where. You chase the
mouse until the frightened creature dives into its
hole, and you know that your task is hopeless.
The tiny thing has found sanctuary. You hunt a
rabbit till at last it vanishes into its burrow under
the long gorse hedge. You can follow it no farther.
It has found sanctuary. In his Fields of France
Mr. Macdougall tells how, in the merry month of
May, the stag defies its keenest pursuers. Among
the picturesque fields and forests of Fontainebleau
the hounds and huntsmen meet. The scent is found.
The chase opens gaily. But soon the flying stag
takes to the valleys. And there *a beautiful fault
frustrates the sport, for, thick as grass, the lily of
the valley springs in all the brakes and shady places.

232 The Uttermost Star

The scent of the game will not lie across these miles
of blossom. The huntsmen are in despair, and the
deer, still deafened by the yelp of the hounds, be-
holds himself befriended by an ally more invincible
than water or forest oak, by the sweet and innumer-
able white lilies that every May-time send the
huntsmen home. Feeding among the fragrant
flowers, the gazelle exults in delight and safety.'
Far off up the valley the trembling creature hears
the baying of the disappointed pack; but he has
found a sanctuary amidst the perfume of the petals.
Mr. Seton and Mr. Stewart White have both told of
the way in which the hunted animals of the great
African and American forests will fly for sanctuary
to the camps of men. *Every night,' says Mr. White,
'a fawn used to sleep outside my friend's tent, within
a foot of his head. It was seeking protection from
the wolves by which its mother had been killed.'
This most attractive law pervades the whole of life.
It is everywhere. I can find no stick or stone in the
solar system upon which it is not engraved.

But are these furry and feathered things the only
creatures in the universe that need a sanctuary?
Surely not! Peep into the nursery or the play-
ground, and you will see that, from our earliest
infancy, we ourselves seek its beneficent protection.
In every game there is a home or a base or a 'fen'
or a 'barley' or a touching of wood — a sanctuary
of some kind whereby the tired player may find
respite from pursuit. And, later on, why do we

The Holly-Tree

233

love at times to creep away to some lonely wood or
quiet field or solitary beach? Is it not that, after
the din and the dust, we find in the very stillness a
sanctuary ? As Mr. Herbert Tucker sings :

A sanctuary within the woods I know —

A sheltered glade by the glad blue o'erspread,
Close-set and tall the pine-trees round it grow;

By their shed needles it is carpeted.
And to its gracious solitude I steal,

When my vexed spirit feels the stress of things ;
Like some hawk-harried bird that hides to heal

Its bloodied plumes, and rest its weary wings.

Even within the wondrous mystery of my own
complex nature, I am continually coming upon
unexpected operations of that lovely law that I
discovered among the branches of the holly-tree.
What happens, for example, when I go to sleep?
A man spends his day in toil and worry and anxiety.
Then at night he throws himself upon his couch, and
the most wonderful thing happens. He closes his
eyes, and where is he? He has left his worries
worlds behind. He has found sanctuary. Or a man
hurts a limb. The pain reaches a certain point.
But beyond that limit his anguish cannot go. The
limb becomes numb. He finds sanctuary. Or in
sudden fear or mental agony one loses consciousness.
We faint. It is a way we have of leaving the
difficulty behind for a while. We plunge into obliv-
ion, and find sanctuary.

And then again, turning to the social side of Hfe,

234 The Uttermost Star

what a beautiful sanctuary is home! When a man
is tired and feels that the world is hard, he turns
away from his tasks at sunset, and goes home.
And when he turns that handle, and sets that door
between himself and his cares, and loses himself in
the love of a wife who worships him, and of children
who clamber to his knee, he feels that he has found a
sanctuary indeed. And what shall I say of friends?
God made a beautiful thing when He made friend-
ship. All day long we are on our guard. We keep
people at arm's length. We set a watch upon our
lips. We speak with reserve. But at last we meet
a friend, one to whom the soul is knit as the soul of
David was knit to the soul of Jonathan. Reserve
is thrown to the winds. We have secrets no longer.
We unbosom ourselves with freedom. In the
abandon of perfect friendship the heart finds its
sanctuary.

Or look in still another direction. Professor David
Smith tells of a great lesson that he learned, as a
young minister, from his old teacher and friend, the
eminent Professor A. B. Bruce. 'He introduced
me,' Professor Smith says, *to my first charge; and
that Sunday night, as we sat in my study, he said to
me, "You will get no inspiration from youi sur-
roundings here; see that you seek it from your
books." I remembered his counsel, and I found it
good. The years which I spent in that quiet parish
proved very profitable. Many an evening I would
come home sick of petty jealousies, and fretted by

The Holly-Tree 235

trivial narrownesses, and would get into my study;
and, behold, I was in a large and wealthy place and
in the fellowship of the immortals. My study was
the most sacred and wonderful place on earth to me.
It was my refuge and my sanctuary.' My sanctuary,
mark you ! And it was probably with this reminis-
cence of his early ministerial days in mind that
Professor Smith penned for us the following verses :

I bless Thee, Lord, that when my life

Is as a troubled sea,
I have, remote from its rough strife,

Harbours to shelter me.

I bless Thee for my home, where love

Her sweet song ever sings,
And Peace spreads, like a nesting dove,

Her gentle, brooding wings.

And for this chamber of desire.

Where my dear books abide,
My constant friends that never tire.

Teachers that never chide.

In my London days I used to turn aside sometimes
from the bustle and turmoil of the city, and stand for
a moment in the spacious quiet of St. Paul's Cathe-
dral. How delectable that stillness seemed as one
crept in from the roar and tumult outside! And
scattered about the great interior, one always saw,
seated here and there, several with whom the world
had gone very hardly. There was a haggard expres-
sion in the face and a hunted look in the eye. They
had turned into the sacred precincts for a moment's

236 The Uttermost Star

breathing-space. They had found sanctuary. It is
but a picture and a parable of the Church universal.
She offers shelter to the battered and the baffled and
the brow-beaten throughout the wide, wide world.

Indeed, it may be said that the Church is not only
a sanctuary herself, but she literally dots the world
with sanctuaries. They spring up automatically
wherever she goes. They respond to her message
as the flowers respond to the spring. What are your
hospitals but sanctuaries for the diseased, the
damaged, and the broken ? What are your asylums,
your infirmaries, your orphanages, your almshouses,
your whole network of benevolent and philanthropic
enterprise, but so many sanctuaries to which the
distracted, the aged, and the unfortunate may
repair? Like the fairy who transformed all that
she touched into silver, Christianity, by some subtle
magic of spiritual alchemy, turns everything that
it touches into sanctuary. See how it laid its hands
upon the heart of our own great empire, and turned
every inch of our soil, and every ship on our seas,
into a sanctuary for the slave.

Slaves cannot breathe in England: if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.

*No matter,' said the eloquent John Philpot
Curran, 'no matter with what solemnities he may
have been offered upon the altar of slavery, the
moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the

The Holly-Tree 237

altar and the god sink together in the dust, and he
stands redeemed, regenerated, disenthralled.'

But, as is the case with so many subjects, the
greatest word ever spoken about sanctuaries was
uttered by one of those old Hebrew prophets who
always seem to probe to the inmost heart of every-
thing. 'A, glorious high throne/ he says, 'is the
place of our sanctuary/ A throne, a sanctuary!
It seems self -contradictory. And yet, when you
come to think of it, the throne is ever the best
sanctuary. Sir Walter Scott has outlined this great
truth for us in the tender story of Jennie Deans.
She was tempted to save her wayward sister by a lie.
It was a very little lie, a mere glossing over of the
actual truth. The slightest deviation from actual
veracity, and her sister's life, which was dearer to
her than her own, would be saved from the scaffold,
and her family honour would be vindicated. But
Jeanie could not, and would not, believe that a lie
could afford a real refuge. And she told the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And
then she set out for London. Along the great white
road she trudged, until her feet were bleeding and
her exhausted form could scarcely drag itself along
the dreadful miles. But on she pressed, until she saw
the lights of London town ; and still on, overcoming
every barrier, until she stood before the Queen.
And then she pleaded, as no mere advocate could
plead, for Effie. With what passion, what entreaties,
what tears, did she besiege the throne! And, before

238 The Uttermost Star

the tempest of her grief and eloquence, the Queen
yielded completely, and gave her her sister's life.
That is the glory of the gospel. It is the introduc-
tion of the shuddering soul to the Highest Tribunal.
And there, at the Throne, in the august Presence of
the Highest, the stricken heart finds its solace, its
satisfaction, and its sanctuary. It is as when the
linnets cluster together on the smooth bark of the
great holly branches, knowing that a thousand leafy
spear-points protect them from all prowling beasts
of prey. It is as when the hunted, terrified, and
breathless deer enters the leafy glade to which the
hunters cannot come. The soul that seeks the
Throne has found sanctuary, true sanctuary, at last.

VI

RIFTS OF BLUE

We do not see the stars in the daytime. They are
there at noon just as much as at night, but the
dazzHng splendour of the sun shames them into
invisibility. Something very similar occurs in the
touching narrative of the sorrow at Bethany. It
is the only story of a personal bereavement, told with
vivid domestic detail, that the New Testament gives
us. It closes sensationally with the raising of
Lazarus. Sometimes I wish that it did not. That
stupendous miracle has engrossed all our attention
to the detriment of several exquisitely beautiful
things that occur elsewhere in the story. The sun
has blotted out the stars. I am going to forget for
a few minutes the dramatic close of the story. I
am going to read it again just as I would read any
other record of domestic grief. And, reading it
thus, I feel like one who, looking upward, gazes upon
a sky overspread with grey and gloomy clouds, yet
who sees here and there the most glorious rifts of
blue. Those rifts of blue are openings into immens-
ity, peeps into infinity, windows that open upon the
everlasting. Let me point to one or two.

239

240 The Uttermost Star

In the course of His journey to the stricken
home Jesus said a very striking thing. 'Our
friend Lazarus sleepeth.' Each word deserves
to be examined under a microscope. To begin with,
is it not intensely suggestive that, with Jesus, Laz-
arus is still Lazarus? He speaks of him still by
the fond, familiar name, and by that name, in the
thrilling climax, again addresses him. 'Lazarus,
come forth!' And to that name Lazarus responds.

Where wert thou, brother, those four days ?

There lives no record of reply,

Which telling what it is to die
Had surely added praise to praise.

We do not know. But wherever he was, he was still
Lazarus. Death had done nothing to impair his own
identity. He was still Lazarus in the thought of
Jesus. He was still Lazarus in his own conscious-
ness. By the old name Jesus called him. To the
old name he answered. The grave robbed him of
nothing that was really worth preserving.

II

Lazarus is still Lazarus; the old identity is un-
impaired. Lazarus is still our friend Lazarus; the
sweet old relationships are undisturbed. And best
of all, Lazarus is still ours. 'Our friend Lazarus.'
If that means anything, it means that those whom

Rifts of Blue 241

we have loved long since and lost awhile are still
our own. 'Our friend sleepeth.' God does not toy
with our holiest affections, giving us one day those
whom He would have us love, and the next day
taking them from us. Our own are our own for
ever. Lazarus, though dead, is still our Lazarus.
The same idea occurs in the Old Testament. In the
first chapter of the Book of Job, which Carlyle con-
sidered the greatest drama ever written, we are told
how Job, by one fell stroke of dire calamity, lost
all that he had. And then, in the last chapter, we
are told that 'the Lord gave Job twice as much as
he had before.' And in each case there is an in-
ventory. Job lost seven thousand sheep ; at the end
he possesses fourteen thousand — twice as many.
He lost three thousand camels; six thousand are at
last given him — twice as many. He loses five hun-
dred yoke of oxen; in the last chapter he owns a
thousand — twice as many. He loses seven sons and
three daughters; in the last chapter seven sons and
three daughters are born to him. Why are the num-
bers of sheep, camels, and oxen doubled, whilst the
number of sons and of daughters remains the same?
And since the number of sons and of daughters re-
mains the same, how can it be said that he had twice
as many as before? The reply is obvious. He had
lost his sheep and camels and oxen for ever. His
sons and daughters who had passed from his sight,
together with the sons and daughters around his
knees, gave him twice as many as he had before. It

242 The Uttermost Star

means that Lazarus is still our Lazarus. That is
Wordsworth's idea in *We are Seven.'

'Sisters and brothers, little maid,

How many may you be?'
'How many? Seven in all/ she said.

And wondering looked at me.

'And where are they? I pray you tell/

She answered, 'Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell.

And two are gone to sea.

'Two of us in the churchyard lie,

My sister and my brother;
And, in the churchyard cottage, I

Dwell near them with my mother.'

It appeared to her questioner that there was matter
here for subtraction, but the curly-headed little
maiden would not hear of it.

'How many are you, then,' said I,

'If they two are in heaven?'
Quick was the little maid's reply,

*0 master 1 we are seven.'

'But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!'

*Twas throwing words away; for still
The little maid would have her will,
And said, 'Nay, we are seven !'

She clung to her conviction that Lazarus is still our
Lazarus, and she had the divinest authority for her
simple faith.

Rifts of Blue 243

III

Or, turning our faces in a fresh direction, let us
peer through another rift in this leaden sky into the
clear heavens beyond. Is it not very singular that
on His arrival at the home in Bethany — His home at
Bethany — He wept? In our bereavements we at-
tempt to stifle sorrow by the thought of their happi-
ness whom we have lost. Jesus knew intimately
the perfect felicity of Lazarus, and yet He wept!
He knew, too, that, in an hour, the joy of Mary and
of Martha would be complete, and yet He wept!
Do these tears need explanation ?

It is, at any rate, a comfort that He wept. By
weeping He at least assured us that there is nothing
faithless, nothing wicked, in our tears. And it would
be like Him to sympathize with us in our sorrow,
however needless that sorrow might be. Sorrow is
sorrow, even though there be no sufficient cause for
grief; and, just because the anguish was there, He
shared its bitterness. There is a lovely letter
written by Mrs. Carlyle to that rugged old husband
of hers in the course of which she tells him how,
during a recent illness, she was greatly comforted by
her maid. The girl only came into the room, and
rubbed her cheek against her mistress's; but it
strangely soothed her. 'And sometimes,' adds Mrs.
Carlyle, T could tell that her cheek was wet, and her
tears meant much to me.' I like to think of poor
Jane Carlyle's letter when I read the story of those
tears at Bethany.

244 The Uttermost Star

And was there not an element of pity in them?
Pity for the sisters, since they were unable to see all
that He had seen — the glory upon which, with
unveiled face, Lazarus was gazing; and pity for
Lazarus too. He Himself knew what it was to
leave that brighter world for this less radiant one,
and He felt for Lazarus in having to make the same
great sacrifice. Professor David Smith, in writing
on the epistles of Isidore, "the Greek scholar and
saint, quotes from a letter which Isidore wrote to
Theodosius the Presbyter on this very matter.
Isidore, says the Professor, was a gentle and gra-
cious soul who had quitted the city of Alexandria
and sought retirement that he might give himself to
devotion and study. He had no aptitude for ecclesi-
astical activities and contentions, and his name never
appears in the bitter and futile controversies which
mark the Church history of that period; yet he exer-
cised in his seclusion a rare ministry of rich and
far-reaching beneficence. He was a scholar, and he
was gifted with an understanding heart and a sym-
pathetic spirit. Troubled folk turned to him in their
perplexities, and they found in him a wise coun-
sellor. He wrote letters near and far, and over two
thousand of these have survived. In one he deals
with this question as to why our Lord wept by the
grave of Lazarus. *Why,' he asks, *did Jesus weep
for Lazarus, knowing that He would raise him from
the dead?' Isidore answers his own question. *It
was precisely on that account,' he says, 'that Jesus

Rifts of Blue 245

wept. Lazarus had entered into his felicity, and
Jesus wept at having to recall him. The miracle
was necessary in order to convince the unbelieving
Jews of His divine title; but in His eyes, knowing
as He did the eternal realities, it was a cruel neces-
sity. The storm-tossed mariner had reached the
haven, and He must call him back to the billows ; the
warrior had won his crown, and He must call him
back to the conflict. And therefore He wept — not
because Lazarus had passed into the joy unspeak-
able, but because he must return to this poor troubled
life.' From any point of view, then, those silent
tears are wondrously and divinely significant.

IV

Just one more rift in those grey skies. We have
walked with Him along the Bethany road; we have
sat with Him in the house of sorrow; let us, without
waiting to witness the actual miracle, go with Him
to the tomb. 'And He cried with a loud voice,
Lazarus, come forth!' Why with a loud voice,
since Lazarus lay at His feet ? Old Matthew Henry,
with rare insight, declares that He cried with a
loud voice to show that He was not addressing
the dead body at all. Had he spoken softly it
might have been supposed that the living soul and
the dead body were inextricably intermingled. He
looked away from the dead body, and cried with
a loud voice that it might be seen that He was ad-

246 The Uttermost Star

dressing a living soul at a distance, and not a dead
man close at hand.

And why was it needful to call upon Lazarus by
name? There were no others lying in that grave.
Would it not have been sufficient had He simply
cried, *Come forth!'? 'He singles out Lazarus
by name,' says Augustine finely, *lest all the hosts
of the dead should hear His voice and come forth
together!' The time had not yet come for that.
Some day He will say, 'Come forth !' and the dead
will rise from land and sea at His sublime behest.
But on that day at Bethany He only wanted one.
He named His man, and, from out the world in-
visible, Lazarus instantly came at His call.

V

Peering through these rifts of blue, I clearly see
two things. I see that, wherever those old com-
panions are whom I have loved long since and lost
awhile, they are within His care and at His call. At
any moment He has but to speak their names and
they instantly rise to greet Him. And the other
thing is this. He calls Lazarus, and Lazarus alone !
Why only Lazarus? H it is in His power to sum-
mon our dear ones from their graves and restore
them to their old familiar places, why does He not
do it ? The fact that He calls Lazarus, and Lazarus
alone, proves indisputably that the others are better
where they are. Wherefore comfort one another
with these words.

VII

A DIVIDED DIACONATE

It is part of the poignant pathos of a minister's life
that the good old men who, as his first officers,
fathered him in his callow youth, fall into their
honoured graves before he is well launched upon his
long career. Like the pilot who steers the vessel
through the narrow and treacherous channel to the
harbour's mouth, and is dropped as soon as the ship
is once tossing on the open sea, those revered fathers
in Israel leave the young minister as soon as the
initial difficulties have been safely surmounted.
I confess that, as the years have multiplied behind
me, I have felt an ever-increasing longing to go back,
just for once, to the queer old vestry in which my
first deacons were wont to assemble, and to find
myself once more surrounded by those rugged old
stalwarts, grizzled and grey, who welcomed me to
Mosgiel nearly a quarter of a century ago. I looked
into their faces for the first time as I stepped from
the train at the end of my long, long journey from
London to that little New Zealand township. They
were standing, the centre of a large and excited
multitude, on the railway platform in the moonHght;

247

248 The Uttermost Star

and nobody thought of shaking hands with me until
those solemn elders had approached and gravely
welcomed me. How my heart quailed that night as
I gazed into their venerable faces ! How ridiculously
young and inexperienced I felt! But I soon dis-
covered that behind countenances that were like
granite cliffs there lay a great wealth of human
tenderness. They pitied my loneliness, for had they
not each of them crossed the same wide seas in the
days of long ago? And, deep down in their hearts,
I think that each man felt that I had come to bury
him, and the thought brought a new softness into
all their breasts. During the twelve years that I
spent at Mosgiel they, one by one, slipped silently
away. I was their first minister, and they were my
first deacons. I dare say that the Mosgiel church
has been excellently served by its officers since then ;
but no group of faces assembled in that vestry could
look to me like the apostolic successors of the old
men of whom I am thinking to-day.

Of the brave battles that were fought in that old
vestry I could, if I would, tell a stirring tale. The
congregation had no idea that such tremendous
debates ever took place.

'It's our practice,' Wullie explained to me at the
first meeting I ever attended, 'it's our practice
always to lay a matter unanimously before the kirk.
The minority never says a word after we leave this
room.'

And so it came to pass that no echo of the great

A Divided Diaconate 249

debates held in that vestry ever reached the church
meetings. At the larger assembly it was always
my duty to announce that the deacons recommended
that certain courses of action be pursued, and the
matter passed without discussion. As a rule the
faces of the men who had made up the minority
at the earlier meetings were a study at such mo-
ments ; but only the chairman had the oportunity of
surveying those lightning-flashes and thunder-
clouds. Only once did the argument in the vestry
become so heated as to be worthy of classification
as a quarrel; and, as it has proved my only expe-
rience of the kind, I have promised myself the satis-
faction of seeing it placed on permanent record.

It was Gavin — surnames were regarded as a re-
dundance among these men — who made the proposal
that led to all the trouble. Gavin was severely prac-
tical. He had a keen eye for the cutting of the
hedges, the weeding of the paths, the painting of
the buildings, and all that kind of thing. A most
useful man was Gavin. He was absolutely inno-
cent of any aestheticism ; his one criterion of church
music was its volume; he fairly squirmed under a
quotation from Dante or Browning. I always
associate Gavin w^ith a certain annual church meet-
ing. In order to lure the settlers and their wives
from the distant farms and homesteads, it was our
custom to supplement the annual business meeting
with a coffee supper. On this particular occasion
the strategy had been more than usually successful;

250 The Uttermost Star

the place was crowded, and the business had simply
romped through. The evening was quite young
when the end of the agenda was reached.

'Before I ask the ladies to bring in the coffee,'
I said, *is there any other matter with which we
must deal?'

*Yes/ cried Gavin, springing to his feet, 'there
is ! We ought to have some rules drawn up concern-
ing the lending of church property. Now there are
those urns. They are lent to all the organizations
connected with the church for their socials and
soirees, and the members borrow them for weddings
and house-warmings. And nobody cares how they
are returned, or whether they are put back clean.
Now, this very afternoon, when I came down to see
that everything was in readiness for to-night's
supper, I found half an inch of maggots in those
urns !'

It was a most incisive and telling speech from his
own point of view, but a perceptible gloom fell upon
the coffee supper. It was happy for Gavin that the
election of officers was over. Had it followed that
speech, the ladies who had been busy over the re-
freshments all the afternoon would have voted
against him to a man.

But to come back to the quarrel. It was Tammas
who led the opposition. Tammas was our treasurer,
and the man who got church money out of Tammas
was regarded in the light of a genius. I can see him
now, a massive old man of flinty and wrinkled

A Divided Diaconate 251

countenance, with an odd way of looking searchingly
at you over his spectacles. I should have been
frightened of Tammas, but he tore all fear out of
my heart on the night of my induction. I arrived
in Mosgiel on a Thursday night ; the induction took
place on Friday. When it was all over, and the
visiting ministers had departed, Gavin, Tammas, and
I found ourselves standing at the gate together.

*And have ye no coat?' asked Tammas, in sur-
prise.

*0h, no,' I answered airily. 'I didn't think I
should need it,' and I reached out my hand to say
good-night.

To my astonishment the old man took off his own
and insisted on my wearing it. If anybody saw me
on my way home, they must have wondered what
horrible disease could have reduced me from the
bulk that I boasted when that coat was made for me,
to the modest dimensions that I possessed that night.

A great theologian was Tammas. As soon as I
announced my text, Tammas took a huge note-book
from his breast-pocket and a stubby blue pencil
from his waistcoat. On Monday morning Tammas
would be at the manse door looking as though, in
the night, the church had been burned down or the
treasury pilfered. When the study door had shut
us in, he would very deliberately unbutton the big
breast-pocket and draw out the ponderous note-book
with its terrible blue records.

The unthinkable glory of God,' he would read,

252 The Uttermost Star

holding the book close to his face ; and then, looking
severely at me, 'You spoke yesterday of the unthink-
able glory of God.'

'Did I, Tammas?' I replied timidly, fearful of
prematurely committing myself.

*You did,' he would say. 'Ye ken I took it doon
at the time.'

Then, out from another of his immense pockets,
came a well-worn Bible. And, from a list already
prepared and drawn up in the note-book, he read
passage after passage to show that the word 'un-
thinkable' was improper and misleading.

After I had committed old Tammas to his grave,
I felt a little ashamed of the manoeuvre by which I
circumvented this habit of his.

'I can see how it is, Tammas,' I said to him one
Monday morning, when his criticisms had been a
little more searching than usual. 'This all comes of
trying to preach without a manuscript. I have not
had sufficient experience to enable me always to use
the precise theological term, and the consequence is
I fall back on the second-best, or even an inaccurate
one. I begin to see the wisdom of reading the
sermon. Such blemishes as these would be less
likely to occur.'

I knew that a manuscript in the pulpit was poor
Tammas's pet aversion; and, surely enough, the old
man came on Monday morning no more.

I shall never forget the meeting at which Gavin
and Tammas came to high words. The scheme that

A Divided Diaconate 253

Gavin introduced that night was one that he had
cogitated for months. He had worked it out to the
last detail. He had plans and specifications and esti-
mates, and, as he enlarged upon his proposals, a
look of fond pride came into his eyes. He already
saw in vision the realization of his dream, and his
soul was fired with admiration and affection. He
sat back at last, leaving the plans spread out on the
table.

Tammas slightly inclined his head and looked at
Gavin over his spectacles — always an ominous sign.
Then he slowly unbuttoned his coat and drew out the
note-book that we all dreaded. He laid it on the
table and very deliberately turned over the pages.
Then he plied poor Gavin with a fusillade of ques-
tions. To make a long story short, he resisted the
proposal on two grounds, the one financial, the other
theological. Gavin had given no indication as to the
sources of revenue from w'hich he expected to meet
the proposed expenditure, and he, as treasurer,
would never consent to apply the offerings of the
congregation to such a purpose. And then, taking
out his Bible and consulting his blue notes, he
proved from a text in the Prophet Amos and another
in the Epistle of James that the suggestion was an
outrage on revealed religion. I never saw Gavin
more ardent nor Tammas more determined. The
position looked to me particularly ugly. In the
course of the discussion that followed, some sharp
exchanges took place. Gavin gave it as his deliber-

254 The Uttermost Star

ate opinion that the church finances had drifted into
the hands of a niggardly old skinflint, who could
find a text or two to prove anything that suited him ;
and Tammas painted in lurid colours the doom of
those stewards who squandered their Lord's money
and brought wild-cat schemes into the house of the
Lord. At last the proposal was defeated by a single
vote. Gavin rose in anger, stuffed the plans hastily
into his pocket, and strode out of the vestry. I
noticed, however, that, in his wrath, he had for-
gotten his hat, which still reposed under the seat that
its owner had just forsaken. I knew Gavin well
enough to feel sure that he would not march home
bareheaded.

We concluded the business of the evening about
twenty minutes later, and followed Gavin out into
the dark. The church lay a good distance back
from the road, and a number of ornamental trees
adorned the open space in front. As we walked
up the path through this shrubbery, Davie, the
youngest of them all, walked beside me and com-
mented on Gavin's unseemly exit. I was on my
guard, remembering the hat that, from my coign of
vantage in front of them, I had seen under the
vacated seat. I resolved to sound a note of warning.

*0h, yes,' I said to Davie, but in a voice loud
enough for them all to hear, *but we needn't worry
about Gavin; he's all right! He thinks about this
church all day and dreams about it all night. He
was here before you and I ever heard of the church,

A Divided Diaconate 255

and I expect he'll still be here after you ard I have
left it!'

'I'm hearing all that ye say!' exclaimed Gavin,
emerging somewhat shamefacedly from among the
shrubs, and walking off towards the church for his
hat.

It was a trifling circumstance, but I could tell from
the tone of Gavin's voice that a work of grace was
proceeding in his soul, and perhaps the incident
paved the way for w^hat followed.

I went to bed that night like a man whose bubbles
had all burst, whose dreams had all been shattered.
I was excited and dejected and miserable. It was a"
long time before I could get to sleep; but when I
did I must have slept very soundly. I awoke with
a start, conscious of a light in the room, of voices in
the hall, and of my wife — a bride of but -three
months — in slippers and dressing-gown bending
over me.

'It's Gavin and Tammas,' she explained, *and
they say they want to see you.'

'Why, what time is it ?' I asked, rubbing my eyes
in astonishment.

'It's twenty to one !' replied she.

'We want to see ye terrible particular!' cried a
voice from the hall.

I nodded consent to their admission, and in they
came, looking, I thought, extremely penitent. Gavin
held out his hand, and, as he came nearer to the
light, I saw something glisten in his eyes.

256 The Uttermost Star

This is no the way we meant to treat ye the
necht ye arrived,' he said, and he pressed my hand
again. Tammas also approached.

*Ye must think as weel as ye can of us,' he said,
as he too took my hand. *We shall need all yer
patience and all yer luv, and ye must aye teach us
better ways. Gavin and I have arranged all about
yon plans, and we shall easily fix all that up at the
next meeting. Now ye must put up a wee bit prayer
for us !'

I crept out of bed and knelt down beside Gavin.
Tammas and the mistress of the manse were kneel-
ing on the opposite side of the bed. If the utterance
of lowly and contrite hearts is specially pleasing at
the Throne of Grace, that must have been a prayer-
meeting of singular efficacy and acceptance. Even
Tammas wiped his spectacles when he rose. Gavin
took his arm to help him along the dark path to the
gate, and so ended my first and last experience of
diaconal strife.

VIII

WHEN THE TIDE TURNS

There is always a vague sensation of sadness in
watching the sunset; but the particular sunset of
which I am now thinking was the last sunset of the
year. And it had, therefore, a pathos of its own.
It was a typical Australian midsummer evening.
After tea I had left the house for a quiet stroll, and,
lured on and on by the tempting twists of the tor-
tuous track, I had wandered farther than I had
intended. I came suddenly to the riverside, and
noticed that the tide was right out. Before com-
mencing the return I sat down on some heavy drift-
wood that the winter floods had flung into the
shingly cove, and watched the violet and gold die out
of the clouds over the mountain. When the last
flicker of light had vanished I rose to go. How
silent it all was ! The very river seemed asleep !
Everything seemed wrapped in the stillness of death
— for was not the old year dying? A water-rat leapt
from the bank into the stream, and swam round and
round for a moment, describing graceful little circles
on the smooth surface of the water. At other times
I had been impressed by the silence of its move-

257

258 The Uttermost Star

ments ; but, breaking up that uncanny hush, the tiny-
creature seemed strangely turbulent and noisy.
The swimmer crept back to his home in the bank,
and everything was quiet again.

But I had not gone more than a hundred yards
before I was again startled. Not far away, out on
the murky waters, lay a cluster of old hulks and
barges moored in the sluggish stream. A strange
flutter and commotion suddenly disturbed these
slumbering craft. Such a tossing and jostling and
swinging and bumping! Such a rattling of chains
and creaking of timbers and straining of cables!
What could it mean? I soon saw. It was the new
tide surging up the river, agitating the old barges
and breaking their repose. It was both a parable
and a rebuke. The old is always stirred to fresh life
and activity at the advent of the new. Who is more
excited than the grandparents when a new baby is
born? I stood corrected. I had been lamenting
the passing of the old year. I had forgotten that
the house is hushed for a birth as well as for a death.
The silence was the silence of eternity, the silence
out of which new worlds rush into being. What
cause had I for gloom? I was losing nothing; I
was gaining everything ! The heaving of the waters
had opened my eyes; I was disillusioned! I felt
that I must greet the unseen with a cheer, and went
home with a smile of welcome for the New Year.

For the hubbub and commotion out in the stream
when the tide came surging in seemed symbolic of

When the Tide Turns 259

the eternal and pitiful feud between novelty and
antiquity. I wonder if I can recall and record what
it was that the surging waters and the drowsy craft
said to each other as their quarrel broke the silence
of that lovely summer's night?

'Get out of the way!' cried the tide, as it pushed
the old barges this way and that way, and seemed
to be laughing at their slow movements and obvious
infirmity. *Get out of the way ! We can't have the
whole place littered up by the things of a past gen-
eration!' And it jostled them rudely and irrever-
ently against each other.

Silly young tide ! What good can it hope to do in
the world except by means of these old barges? Let
it lift them gently, bear them patiently, and make it
possible for them to visit creeks and inlets which
they could never enter at low water ! These weather-
beaten hulks that the tide treats with such disdain
represent the one means placed at its disposal by
which it may render the world some real service
before it ebbs and goes again !

*Oh dear! oh dear!' cry the sleepy old craft.
'What a nuisance it is ! We were sleeping so peace-
fully; and everything was so still that even the
splash of the water-rat startled us ! And then there
comes all this flutter and commotion!' And
anybody who caught the testy tones in which the
old barges muttered this remonstrance could feel
how deeply they resented the coming of the new tide.

Silly old barges ! For deep down in their dark and

26o The Uttermost Star

cavernous holds there were lying bags and bales and
casks and crates that could never reach their destina-
tion at low water; and the new tide, as it came
rushing, swelling, surging in, represented the one
chance they had of getting their cargoes into port.

It is very sad and pitiful, this wrangle between the
old barges and the new tide. It is always sad and
pitiful and humiliating when we fail to recognize
that the old and the new belong to each other, and
that neither is complete without the other. It is
the peculiar temptation of youth to treat the tradi-
tions of the past with impatience. And it is the
special frailty of old people that they look with sus-
picion upon everything new. Youth always has its
face to the future and worships the new. Age al-
ways has its face to the past and treasures the old.

Now about all this Jesus once said a very striking
thing, which I blush to confess that I never under-
stood until yesterday. 'Every scribe,' He said,
'who is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is
like unto a man that is an householder, which bring-
eth forth out of his treasure things new and old/
Things new and old, mark you! Not a jumble of
new things and old things all mixed up together,
like new wine in old bottles. But things that are,
at one and the same time, both old and new. For no
really good thing is either old or new. It is both.
Bring me the most antique object you can find, and
I will show you how startlingly new it is ! Bring me
the most newfangled idea that has come to light,

When the Tide Turns 261

and I will astonish you by revealing its hoary
antiquity.

The wise householder to whom our Lord referred
was, it always seems to me, Mrs. Wildman, of
Mablethorpe. We all remember the passage in
Lord Tennyson's Life of his father — the laureate.
That lovely entry always fascinates me. It occurs
in one of the poet's letters to his sweetheart, Emily
Selwood. T am housed,' he says, *with an old
friend of mine, who, with his wife, is a perfectly
honest Methodist. When I came I asked her after
the news, and she replied, "Why, Mr. Tennyson,
there is only one piece of news that I know, that
Christ died for all men." And I said to her, "That
is old news, and good news, and new news !" ' New
and old! The good woman was so instructed unto
the kingdom of God that she brought forth out of
her treasures things that were both new and old!

The old is so new! What is the oldest thing of
which you can think? 'Old as the hills!' you say.
Very well ; and as the phrase falls from your lips my
thoughts fly back to the grand old mountain over
whose towering head and massive shoulders I
watched the sun set only yesterday — the mountain
'with its head in the clouds and its feet in the sea.'
How often have I wandered about its leafy tracks
and wooded slopes! I can see it from my window
as I write. Look at the scars up there on the summit
— eloquent witnesses to wounds inflicted before our
little race began. What cataclysmic changes the old

262 The Uttermost Star

mountain-peak has seen! What titanic forces tore
those slopes in ages long gone by ! What storms and
earthquakes and glaciers! See these huge gashes,
these precipitous cliffs, these beetling crags, these
jagged ridges, these scarped pinnacles, these piled
and broken boulders! Bring a geologist, and he
will tell you wondrous tales of Ice Ages and Stone
Ages, of Tertiary periods and post-Tertiary periods,
as he reads for you these stony records.

Yes; here is antiquity with a vengeance. And
yet, as I look out of my window morning by morn-
ing, it is not the antiquity, but the novelty, of the
mountain that startles me. We look out upon its
pointed peak when we rise, and flatter ourselves that,
from its appearance, we can forecast the weather
of the coming day. However that may be, one
thing is certain. The mountain, like the divine
mercy, is 'new every morning.' It is as fresh as the
dew on the grass. It is never twice the same. One
day it is wrapped in angry storm-clouds, majestic
and terrible. The next it is sullen and dismal,
gloomy and grey. Sometimes it appears blue and
close at hand. Sometimes it looks brown and far
away. Now it is gay and sunlit. Soon it will be
snow-capped and glittering. And in winter it will
wear a robe of radiant whiteness. But in any case
it is always fresh. Each time we say, 'Well, we
never saw it quite Hke that before!' And if we
ascend its bushy slopes, and cultivate its more inti-
mate acquaintance, it is still the novelty of this an-

When the Tide Turns 263

tique mass that astonishes us. Like some incor-
rigible coquette, the old mountain seems to take end-
less pains to renew its youth. It is true that here and
there, in falling trees and fading grasses, there are
signs of decay. But beside the prostrate blue-gum
are a hundred supple young saplings, and the faded
fern is already almost hidden by a dozen fresh young
fronds. And so the mountain-side seems always to
be wearing a fresh garb. 'Just look here !' cries one
child, as she rushes back excitedly from her rambles ;
and 'See what I've found!' exclaims another. The
mountain bewilders and embarrasses us by its very
wealth of novelties. So new is the old.

And how ancient is the new ! What is the newest
thing of which you can think? A baby just born?
When does a baby begin to be born? A baby is a
very antique affair. All generations, right away
back to Adam, slumber in this little child of yours.
This newborn babe is about the oldest thing living.
It is the natural emblem of antiquity. Sir Oliver
Lodge, in a recent article, has shown how old our
startling modern inventions really are. It is a simple
matter of movement, he says. A man takes six old
things and puts them in a fresh relationship to each
other, and then calls the result a new invention.
Volta, for example, took zinc, which is as old as the
hills, and copper, which is as old as the hills, and
acid, which is as old as the hills, and the three put
together proved a sensational and epoch-making
invention. What was there new about it? It was

264 The Uttermost Star

literally as old as the planet. And yet it was so new
that it changed the face of the modern world, revo-
lutionizing all our commerce, and turning our indus-
tries into new channels. Yes, all these old things are
wonderfully new, and all these new things are
wonderfully old! Antiquity and novelty are twin-
sisters.

Yes, they are twin-sisters, and, as is so often the
case with twin-sisters, they grow into each other's
ways and become interdependent. They need each
other, and we need them both. If we had the new
without the old we should be instantly reduced to
imbecility. I can tell the difference between chalk
and cheese because old experiences of chalk and
cheese come to my aid. I recognize a tree as a
tree, and a man as a man, because all the trees and
all the men from out of my past rise up to help me.
A newborn baby is in such a helpless condition of
mental vacuity simply because he is so pitiably
pastless. He has no chalk and cheese, no men and
no trees, by which he can test and compare the
bewildering objects that swim into his vision.

Similarly, if we had the old without the new we
should be reduced to mental stagnation and spiritual
paralysis. No man can live on old experiences. I
need new mercies every morning, just as much as I
need new meals. I need new visions, new ideals,
new un foldings of the Father's face, new applica-
tions of the Saviour's blood, new illuminations of
the heavenly Spirit. Even though I move along the

When the Tide Turns 265

old routine, teaching the same old class, or preach-
ing from the same old pulpit, I need new throbbings
and pulsations of spiritual power.

Listen to the water-mill, all the livelong day!
How the clicking of the wheels wears the hours awayl
Languidly the autumn winds stir the greenwood leaves;
From the hills the reapers sing, binding up their sheaves;
And a proverb o'er my mind like a spell is cast;
'The mill will never grind with the water that is past*

However old the mill may be, the stream that turns
it must be newer than the newest sensation !

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